Presenter: Maura A. Smale, New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Smale is an avid gamer, starting with Candy Land as a child. She has a Wii at home which she plays with her child. Lots of learning happens in games and they are the “original educational technology.” Solving problems in an increasingly complex way are important aspects and using games in the classroom can be fun.
At CUNY lots of opportunities for collaboration at CUNY. She participates in the CUNY Games Network which brings together faculty and staff each month to discuss how games and simulations can help people learn. Last part of meeting they do playtesting. Participating in the group gives Smale inspiration and ideas for use of games in her teaching. The guiding principles of Games Network are that there are lots of ways to incorporate games into education and we should explore the many avenues. However, barriers to using games in education include: time, access, cost, student interest, support (both pedagogical and technological).
A few examples of existing library games: Quarantined, Easter Oracular Library of St. Jerome, Jeopardy-type games. Smale decided to create a non-digital game for her classroom. She suggests we ease into using games in our instruction and leaving the technological development behind, she forged ahead and creating an exciting learning environment for her students.
Quality Counts is the game Smale developed to help students find and evaluate web sources. Learning objectives were first identified (relating to ACRL standard 3 and others) on evaluation information sources. Smale has used her game in two English Composition first year classes. She went through CUNY’s Institutional Review Board so was able to survey the students after. Equipment needed: whiteboard, markers, computer classroom, projector, index cards, small prizes are excellent motivators (candy, stickers).
75 minute Class Structure
- Intro (15 min) – rules and criteria for selection of internet sites
- Group Student Research (15 min)
- Report back (40 min)
- Wrap up (5 min)
Gameplay Rules
- Team-based play
- Search for information that match each criteria: find at least 2 sources
- Write info that matches criteria on index cards
- Find sources much meet quality criteria
What criteria you may ask? That’s exactly what Smale was hoping for. They used crowd sourcing to define criteria. Here’s how this works. Ask the students to decide the criteria they should use. Students eventually get to authority, accuracy, date, sometimes the students mention objectivity as well. After the team research time, groups reported back to all their findings and the librarian tallies points & award prizes.
What she learned: next time she’d work more with faculty to help develop criteria, get the faculty member into the discussion. She asked a lot of open ended questions to help guide students in development of the criteria. Another librarian mentioned she has her students do a similar activity then has the student teams to debate over the sites found.
One research topic was to find information on “location aware devices.” Teams found company sites, research reports, an AOL news article and Smale was surprised that one group used library databases and refused to use the web. For a topic related to the history of Brooklyn students found PBS sites, Google Books among others which led to interesting discussions on primary source materials since the Google Book was from the 19th century. One student found a web site with no date, so students used the Internet Explorers Properties which gave a current, incorrect date. This allowed another teachable moment for Smale.
Grey areas: partial credit given when “expertise” of author wasn’t always top rate. She felt using the index cards would be like poker, but didn’t work this way in actuality.
One group accused other group of cheating because they used library sources!
Survey Results: Almost all students enjoyed the game however one felt s/he knew everything already (hmmm… sound familiar?). The majority of students (80%) felt they gained skill in evaluation websites. 64% prefer game-based learning over traditional lesson.
Smale suggests we all take the plunge and incorporate games into our instruction.
Contact Maura Smale at msmale@citytech.cuny.edu.
Christine Drew
Manager, Instruction & Outreach
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Gordon Library