Karen Markey is a faculty member in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Earlier this year, she received a small grant from the Delmas Foundation to build a prototype online board game that teaches students information-literacy skills. Her game prototype is now fully operational and is being tested and evaluated by a class of 75 undergraduates at the University of Michigan.
They’ve just finished conducting interviews with student game players, but they haven’t had sufficient time to mull over interview data and analyze game play logs. They already recognize that the incentive for playing the game is a critical issue and future games must be intimately connected to a class assignment or project.
Because Karen wants to do something that would scale beyond Michigan, she is looking for research partners at public or academic libraries who are interested in building on her foundation, expanding what they have already done, and testing her approach with their library patrons. Her intent is to find libraries who want to collaborate on an IMLS National Leadership grant to host a unique instance of the game that is customized to achieving their information literacy objectives.
The game is based on the “search strategy” model that Tom Kirk and his Earlham College colleagues devised to teach undergraduates how to do library research. Karen chose the “Black Death” for the prototype game’s topic, and they are learning from their evaluation other topics that college-age students prefer.
Here are some links to learn more about their approach:
- Information on their Storygame Project generally: http://www.si.umich.edu/~ylime/storygame.html
- Playing-the-game video at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u76tW-ne-yY
- Manual for playing the game: http://ics.umflint.edu:3904/manual/manual.html
If you’re interested in partnering with Karen, you can contact her at ylime [ at ] umich.edu. I can’t wait to hear more about this project and watch it develop.
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
Pingback by The Latest News in Gaming » Looking for Partners for IMLS Grant for Information Literacy Game — December 5, 2007 @ 7:22 pm
This seems like a great idea to draw students into “instruction” and hands on learning. Is the game setup to use more than just Google? Does it encourage the use of the OPAC or any databases or even the library’s website? Google is all well and good, but I think students need to realize that not everything they need is found through Google. Do the questions become more difficult as the game progresses? Can it be modified to an individual library? I would love more information!
Comment by Michele James — December 7, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
Looking at the manual to the game, it appears that library resources are introduced later on. However, I question the wisdom of beginning with web sites–particularly since the issue of the accuracy of the information contained in them is never raised.
Comment by Ed Bailey — December 7, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
So good to see more librarians are working on this. In Delft, the Netherlands we are beginning in january. An unique cooperation between DOK, the public library, and the University library. The hero in this game will be with no suprise a Shanachie………(www.shanachietour.com). Besides the development of the game, which will be done by students of different levels of higher education. There will be game nights and an international conference in march.
Comment by erik boekesteijn — December 8, 2007 @ 2:46 am
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I haven’t had a chance to play the game yet, but if you have questions, Karen is the one who can answer them. 🙂
Comment by jenny — December 10, 2007 @ 6:50 am
“They already recognize that the incentive for playing the game is a critical issue and future games must be intimately connected to a class assignment or project.”
Are you saying that the only incentive to get them to play the game is by holding a grade over their heads? Or is this a statement of academic requirement? I’m not sure I understand this …
Comment by Nathan Lowell — December 11, 2007 @ 10:00 am
[…] The Shifted Librarian » Looking for Partners for IMLS Grant for Information Literacy Game (tags: information_literacy gaming) […]
Pingback by links for 2008-01-07 « mmm. . .brain — January 7, 2008 @ 5:46 pm