Title
Designing and testing a web-based board game for teaching information literacy skills and concepts
Abstract
Purpose - This paper seeks to focus on the design and testing of a web-based online board game for teaching undergraduate students information literacy skills and concepts. Design/methodology/approach - Project team members with expertise in game play, creative writing, programming, library research, graphic design and information seeking developed a web-based board game in which students used digital library resources to answer substantive questions on a scholarly topic. The project team hosted game play in a class of 75 undergraduate students. The instructor offered an extra-credit incentive to boost participation resulting in 49 students on 13 teams playing the game. Post-game focus group interviews revealed problematic features and redesign priorities. Findings - A total of six teams were successful meeting the criteria for the instructor's grade incentive achieving a 53.1 percent accuracy rate on their answers to substantive questions about the black death; 35.7 percent was the accuracy rate for the seven unsuccessful teams. Discussed in detail are needed improvements to problematic game features such as offline tasks, feedback, challenge functionality, and the game's black death theme. Originality/value - Information literacy games test what players already know. Because this project's successful teams answered substantive questions about the black death at accuracy rates 20 points higher than the estimated probability of guessing, students did the research during game play which demonstrates that games have merit for teaching students information literacy skills and concepts.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1108/07378830810920978
LIBRARY HI TECH
Keywords
Field
DocType
Reference services,Library instruction,Video games,Design and development,Information literacy
World Wide Web,Sociology,Information seeking,Game design document,Information literacy,Graphic design,Project team,Game Developer,Game testing,Multimedia,Library instruction
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
26
4
0737-8831
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.65
4
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Karen Markey1797.76
Fritz Swanson281.86
Andrea Jenkins3111.96
Brian J. Jennings481.86
Beth St. Jean511611.59
Victor Rosenberg681.86
Xingxing Yao781.52
Robert L. Frost892.27