Games for teaching information literacy skills

And if you do play it, drop us a line in the comments — my fellow workshop participants and I would be interested to hear how it goes. Image by futureatlas. Educators coming together to explore how the principles of games promote learning.

Patterns that characterized the game play of unsuccessful teams and successful teams were B, C, and D, and A, D, and E, respectively.

The estimated probability of guessing right answers to questions was. Except for the Warriors, unsuccessful teams appeared to be testing the waters, that is, trying to determine whether they should invest time and effort in game playing.

The Warriors attempted 28 questions, answering half of them correctly. Most likely, the Warriors had every intention of meeting the instructor's incentive but a combination of competing priorities and technical problems that suspended game play during Thanksgiving break prevented them from doing so. The estimated probability of guessing right answers to questions was 0. Players did not have to leave their personal computers to do the research to answer questions for the web, online encyclopedias, and databases.

Their higher accuracy rates for these questions may be due to the convenience of doing research online at their computers. Asked to identify the game's easiest questions, students immediately replied "web questions.

Asked about the game's most difficult questions, students chose books and edited works, that is, questions that required them to go to the U-M Library:. Prior to game play, the research team put books and edited works on reserve. After game play, reserves staff confirmed that only 5 of the 51 items we placed on reserve were borrowed, and even these items were checked out a total 6 times. Asked about consulting books and edited works on reserve, students confirmed this in interviews answering in a chorus of "noes" to our direct questions.

Game players told us that answering citation database questions was difficult. Their accuracy rates for citation database questions were as low as for books and edited works questions despite the online availability of citation databases.

One focus group interviewee's explanation cites difficulties with this database's interface:. Citation searching may be new to undergraduate students. Accustomed to search engines in which they scan lists of web sites and journal articles on the same or similar subjects as their entered words and phrases, students scan lists of journal articles, books, and book chapters that cite the author names they entered.

Differences in abbreviations, page numbers, and page ranges result in multiple listings requiring searchers to exert effort scrutinizing intermediary results, a perplexing task for some students as described above.

The bottom line is that despite the online nature of citation databases, they are tools that deviate from traditional database searching and require searchers to exert patience, attention, and effort to learn how to use them effectively. During our discussion of visiting the library, a few students assumed a cavalier attitude about whether the items in the library's physical collections should figure into their research.

For them, research meant searching the web or online journal-article databases for recently published works and downloading them to their computer's desktop. Our intentions with regard to Hospital tasks were good. Tasks introduced players to campus libraries where they could learn how librarians and specific library collections could help them now and in the future. Unfortunately, Hospital tasks were disruptive and ruined the overall flow of the game.

Here is what students said about the disruptive nature of the Hospital:. A redesign of the Defense of Hidgeon would put an upper limit on the performance of the Hospital task maybe 3 times and comparable tasks that deviate from online game administration.

The research team encouraged students to play the Defense of Hidgeon in teams rather than individually. Students followed our advice but the Hospital task ruined the online ebb and flow of the game. The suggestions students made about how to improve the game included capabilities for giving one player control while team members observed his or her actions and allowing the controlling player to pass control to fellow team members. Such capabilities were not possible within our time and budget constraints but, given more time and financial resources, they would be a top priority in an enhancement of the game at hand.

When students were asked what they learned from game play, their comments focused on the "how-to" connected with library research such as learning the names of databases, becoming familiar with a particular database's content, choosing databases using the library portal's Search Tools capability, retrieving useful results, and searching particular databases.

In this comment, a student gives us advice about how to order monastery libraries on the game board:. In fact, ordering the game's monastery libraries was a very deliberate task of the Storygame Project team.

The order was in keeping with the GenSpec Model. Next were libraries where retrievals were broad-based overviews of topics in the form of encyclopedias and books.

At the end of the board were libraries with technical, in-depth, and scholarly treatments of topics. That game players did not come to a realization about the order of monastery libraries was troublesome to us researchers. It calls into question the very design of the game. It also demonstrates the need for instructors to be forthright about adding information literacy games to the course curriculum, telling students learning objectives before game play begins, encouraging students to talk about what they are learning during game play, and debriefing students at the end of the game.

Based on an analysis of game play and evaluation data, the research team generated premises for the development of information literacy games. Three premises are featured here in a discussion that tells how the project team would improve the Defense of Hidgeon or design a new game to be in sync with each premise. SI students were slow to sign up on teams and play the game because they did not see a direct connection between the game's Black Death theme and the course's information science content.

Although students who played the game concluded that they could apply their newly acquired online searching skills and knowledge to the research for the course's two required papers, and, possibly, research for papers assigned in other courses, students wanted to know up front exactly how they would benefit from game play. Only after the instructor issued an incentive that affected students' final grades did they sign up and play the game.

To be in sync with premise 1, instructors would have to tell students what they can expect to learn from game play and grade them on game play. The Defense of Hidgeon was ambitious and functionally rich.

It gave students hands-on experience using several different types of information retrieval systems, exposed them to a wide variety of information sources, and put them in situations in which they made decisions about credibility, audience level, and discipline. The project team yielded to the temptation to pack more and more into the game because we wanted to teach students as much as possible while we had their attention on game play.

Based on our experience, we recommend that future information literacy games give players mastery over one key concept, task, or procedure. If we were to redesign the Defense of Hidgeon , we would streamline the game, eliminating game spaces or rethinking them so that they reinforced the General-to-Specific Model.

We would also rethink the challenge. It could be simplified, requiring teams to post their 1 best citation in response to a scenario. Alternatively, the challenge could be eliminated entirely and replaced by a "Synthesis" game space at the end of the board that would ask players questions to reveal the General-to-Specific Model to them.

Students must have concrete evidence that leaving their computer to do research will have a payoff in terms of improving their research or affecting their grades. Putting an upper limit on the requirement for teams to perform Hospital tasks would remedy the ill-will that game players developed toward the Defense of Hidgeon's Hospital feature. Here are sixty field-tested games that teach information literacy skills using fun, interactive activities at a variety of skill and knowledge levels.

Editor Theresa McDevitt has picked 60 of the absolute best ones, all field-tested, from colleges and universities across the country. Examples include:. Details for each game are provided, including: objectives; information literacy standards addressed; audience size, educational level ; time required; materials and equipment — including prize suggestions; area setup; preparation; game instructions and processes.

With this step-by-step creative guide, instructors will be able to confidently create information literacy instruction sessions that will break the mold, engaging students in learning that is both highly educational and highly enjoyable.

Summary :. She has taught a one-credit information literacy course with a service-learning element for the last five years. Skip to search. Skip to main menu. Skip to main content. For the past several years he has worked with Knovel an vendor of engineering resources to create the Knovel Academic Challenge.

The game is developed by students, for students, and has participants work in teams to answer questions and solve problems using engineering resources. A dynamic leaderboard available on the Academic Challenge website offers an element of competition. The leaderboard shows only the performance of an institution or university, fostering a sense of team among the individual challenge participants who work collaboratively to advance their standings.

You can hear Bhatt and Daniel Christe, a co-author of the paper, discuss their work in this Elsevier produced video. Bhatt continues to evolve the challenges and seeks new ways to teach information literacy.