Game On!: Using Gaming to Promote Information Literacy

Game On!: Using gaming to promote information literacy

Kristen Jacobson & John CaseyGlenbrook South High School LibraryGlenview, Illinois

Our Goal

Improve Freshman Library Orientation and increase student engagement

Introduce Freshman students to some key information literacy concepts and skills and prepare them for their initial research project

Introduce students to the Glenbrook South Library policies, staff and resources

Keep it light (and ideally, fun)

The Old Way…..The Deadly Dull Scavenger Hunt

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

The Old Way…..The Deadly Dull Scavenger Hunt

SNORE

The Old Way…..The Deadly Dull Scavenger Hunt

BORIN

G!

The One Good Thing About the Old Way

“Better worksheet with good questions”

“More hands on”“More interesting”“More computer based”

Why a Game?

More interactive More fun for students More “buy-in” from the students Opportunity to highlight different

information literacy skills Immediate feedback More fun for the librarians and

teachers Research suggests that educational

gaming has a positive effect on learning

Sounds good. So what did we do?

Organization of the Game

Trivial Pursuit-style format 5 categories:

Finding Information Choosing ResourcesSearch Strategies & Citing Sources Searching the WebLibrary Policies

Can have 1-4 players

Cool! How do you play?

Players must answer 2 questions correctly in each of the 4 main categories

Players receive a “light” for each category answered

Once all four “lights” are obtained, a player advances to the Home Stretch

Player must answer one more question from each category to win

Time for a history lesson

Invented by Scott Rice and Amy Harris at the UNC-Greensboro Libraries

Time for a history lesson

Open source Licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

That is a whole lot of words! What exactly does that mean?

Free to share and adapt the content, but you MUST: attribute Scott and Amy & link your

game back to their site use the game for non-commercial

purposes only license your modified game under a

similar license

Is there anything else I would need to do to adapt this game for my own library?

At minimum: Change library logo Change library name Change the link on the logo to direct to

your library’s website Change questions

What skills & software would I need?

Very few

No expensive software or programming knowledge required

Existing logo can be copied from your webpage

Questions can be modified in Notepad

Can I make more extensive changes?

What we changed: board art question functions designed a favicon created custom avatars feedback survey

Easy changes

logos question content board art favicon avatars

Avatars

Otaku Avatar MakerThis is the one we used. It is good for creating simple, manga style characters.

Create a MiiCreate your own Nintendo Wii-style "Mii" characters. Not affiliated with Nintendo Co. Ltd.

MinimizerMake "lego" minifigure avatars. Not affiliated with the LEGO Group ©.

MadMen YourselfMake early 60s style Madmen avatars. Very cute. The head-shots are distinctive even when made quite small and are popular avatars on Twitter.

Board Art/ Color Changes/Favicon

Photo/Image editing software Microsoft Paint

Adobe Photoshop

Free Software: GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program) Picnik

Hosting

Original Information Literacy Game hosted internally Uses an ASP.NET scripting language that

supports scoring and integrated feedback forms

GBS Library Game hosted externally on Go Daddy’s servers Does not include scoring or integrated

feedback forms

What was difficult

Apostrophes and ampersands

Magazine & Newspaper DatabasesMagazine & Newspaper Databases

GBS Library’s WebsiteGBS Library's Website

Changing question format

Surveys/Feedback

Unable to host the site to get quantitative feedback, so qualitative feedback is essential

GoogleDocs—easy to use, attractive templates

What went wrong

Firefox vs Explorer

Pop-up blocker (works now!)

What went wrong

THE DREADED NULL SET

What went wrong

Changing how questions function

Inconsistent feedback

No scoring capability because of hosting issue

What went right

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Concrete feedback (free response)

Easy to update this year

Help from Scott Rice, fix incorporated into his own version, yay open source!

Next Steps

Develop quantitative methods to assess the impact of the game on student learning Pre and Post assessments of knowledge

of the content areas (finding information, choosing resources, searching the web)

Contact Info

All of the files and links you need are at:

http://gbslibguides.glenbrook225.org/infolitgame

Kris Jacobson - Librariankjacobson@glenbrook225.org

John Casey - Library Lab Managerjcasey@glenbrook225.org