Maura Smale, Associate Professor and Chief Librarian at the New York City College of Technology (CUNY), has developed Game On for Information Literacy, a brainstorming card game to help librarians foster information literacy and library instruction. The game is a modification of What’s Your Game Plan?, a card game that teaches instructors the basics of game-based learning. Considering how easy it is to generate and distribute these games via the web, perhaps the academic community should build a portal for instructors to design their own domain-specific games like the popular Cards Against Humanity?
Category Archives: Information Literacy Games
Play a Game, Make a Game
I’m happy to share an article I wrote that’s just been published in the Journal of Creative Library Practice: Play a Game, Make a Game: Getting Creative with Professional Development for Library Instruction. In this article I discuss the development of a brainstorming card game for creating games to teach information literacy competencies. Please read and share widely!
Here’s the article abstract:
Using games in the library classroom is an active learning strategy that can increase student engagement. However, not all librarians are equally familiar and comfortable with bringing game-based learning to the library. Game On for Information Literacy is a brainstorming card game to help librarians create games for information literacy and library instruction. Inspired by other successful brainstorming card games, this game was developed, playtested, and iterated over several years in workshops, graduate-level MLIS courses, and professional development programs. Game materials are all available to download, use, remix, and share.
Citation Gaming
Last April I facilitated a workshop as part of the CUNY Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee’s (LILAC) spring program on library and information literacy instruction. My breakout was on using games for library and information literacy instruction, and we played a game I developed called Game On for Information Literacy to brainstorm a game called Citation Challenge! to teach academic citation style to students.
It was a fun and productive workshop, and we were able to come up with a game for teaching citation that should take about 15 minutes to play, along with several variants that can be used if there’s additional time for the game. Check out the full rules, materials needed, and gameplay on the LILAC website. Please feel free to play it with your students if you need a quick activity to cover citation basics. 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.com
