 Adventure in Libraryland
By Galadriel Chilton, Gretchen Regehr |
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| Instructional Objective | Learners & Context | Object of Game | Game Materials | | Time Required | Rules | Design Process | References | EDTEC Assignments Home
.Adventures in Libraryland is designed to help undergraduate college students learn information literacy skills. The game focuses on what are different types of resources and what are the library resources and services that will enable students to retrieve information.
Librarians often introduce the content of this game to undergraduates during their freshmen year. However, throughout their course work and as they complete research assignments, their information literacy skills should refine and advance. This game is designed for undergraduate college students of traditional or nontraditional college age as the primary audience. Students' existing knowledge of the game's content will vary depending on factors such as the students' high school information literacy experiences, comfort with computers, discipline of study, and whether students have attended information literacy sessions as part of their college career. According to the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, there are over 15 million undergraduates enrolled in higher education institutions for the 2007/2008 school year. Of these students, 63% are between the ages of 18 and 24 and 36% are over 24. The slight majority of the traditional-aged students are often called 'Millennials' or 'Next Gen' learners that "are a huge generation of impatient, experiential learners, digital natives, multitaskers, and gamers who love the flat, networked world and expect nomadic connectivity, 24x7" (Sweeney, R.). How librarians choose to implement this game as part of an information literacy instruction session may vary. The game could be played as a means of introducing students to library services, resources, and terminology, or it could be played after a traditional information literacy instruction class as a means of assessing student engagement and learning. However, for students to have the most fun with the game, the designers recommend that students have some knowledge of the library resources and services before playing the game. The goal is to be the first player or team to obtain the 5 Resource Symbols needed to cover all 5 spots on the Research Bibliography Card. The first team to earn enough Resource Symbols for all of the resources on their Research Bibliography Card wins. Players will either earn Resource Symbols outright or earn Point Tokens that they can exchanged for Resource Symbols.
After the initial set-up that requires players to cut out cards and other game pieces, the game will only take a few minutes to set up. The exact length of the game will depend on the players' knowledge and skill. How many times the game could be played in a class period depends on the length of the class period.
The Rules
Game Play:
For Each Turn:
Librarian Power Roll - After one round of play (each team has completed one turn), if a team rolls a 6, they earn the help of the librarian. The team keeps the librarian until another team rolls a 6, at which point the team that rolled the six now has the help of the librarian. As long as a team is in possession of the librarian, they do not lose any points or turns regardless of incorrect answers to Research Assistant Cards or Master Researcher Cards, or due to an obstacle on a Research Event Card. However, if a question is answered incorrectly, the playing team does not gain points, and it is still the next team's turn.. Exchanging point tokens for resource pieces - To exchange Point Tokens for Resource Symbols, the team's player piece must go to one of the Circulation Desks. 4 Point Tokens = 1 Resource Symbol Players continue moving around the board until a team or player has successfully covered all five resources on their Research Bibliography Card with a Resource Symbol. Design Process
The instructional goal of the game is to allow players to demonstrate their information literacy skills. Because we designed the game for undergraduate college students, the complexity of the rules and play is moderately detailed. Early on, we knew that we wanted to provide questions that allowed for player's knowledge and application of such knowledge - to be rewarded. We wanted to provide opportunities for additional reward, as well as risk, for higher level thinking. Therefore, we devised rules that allowed participants to wager points gained on the possibility of greater reward by allowing players who answer Research Assistant Card questions correctly, the choice of answering harder Master Researcher Card questions. However, this option also carries the risk of losing points if the Master Researcher Card question is answered incorrectly. We knew that we wanted to expose participants to many aspects of library services and research experiences: from the day-to-day possibilities of campus life to insight into how students can use logical and educated shortcuts to make research more effective and efficient. This played out in the development of obstacles and shortcut cards, which were later collectively named "Research Event Cards." In early discussions, we talked about comparisons to BINGO when covering spots on the Research Bibliography Cards, to Trivial Pursuit for the Research Question Cards, and to Jeopardy for risking points already earned when attempting answer harder questions. Therefore, we opted to provide information on the types of resources that might be realistic in a particular discipline's research - as represented on the Research Bibliography Cards - but to write the questions for the Research Question Cards on general, multidisciplinary library service and resource information. The hope was that such questions would provide a solid foundation on good research principles for all disciplines. We also wanted to pursue the idea of variability in resource choices - "good" resource choices vs. "ideal" ones. Again, we deemed that this was too complex, and would vary depending on the research topic and discipline. However, we really wanted there to be some variability within the game, resulting in developing two tracks of questions: easier and more difficult. Originally titled Level 1 and Level 2, these two types of questions were renamed "Research Assistant" and "Master Researcher" Cards. The Research Assistant Cards include true/false and multiple choice questions only. The content of the Research Assistant Cards is basic and more elementary information that many students already know or learn very early in their college tenure. The Level 2, or Master Researcher Cards, include true/false, one multiple choice, and many short answer questions. The Master Researcher Card is more advanced, and covers what students are likely to learn later in their college careers. The designers introduced the librarian figure to add additional random opportunity, but also to reinforce the instructional component that librarians provide information, support, and expert help. While two or more individuals could play the game, the game was designed for team play because of expected variations is students' information literacy skills and information seeking abilities. Furthermore, and as noted by Oblinger and Oblinger (2006), current college students – millennials - “gravitate toward group activity." The game could be expanded to include more disciplines, or more detailed questions for students studying a particular discipline. Feedback from our instructor and our peers was invaluable. We knew that our rules were ambitious, and it was useful to see where we had succeeded in articulating our intent and where we had superfluous rules that we could streamline. This was a critical step in bringing this game to completion.
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