Building the games students want to play: BiblioBouts final performance review

Abstract

A University of Michigan (U-M) research team designed, developed, deployed, and evaluated the BiblioBouts information literacy game. BiblioBouts gave students repeated opportunities to develop and practice information literacy skills while they completed a research-and-writing assignment. The evaluation enlisted a multi-methodological approach to data collection. BiblioBouts players were exposed to more online sources than non-players. Players cited more sources in their final-paper bibliographies than non-players. Players felt that they would be better at and more confident about performing various research tasks than they felt before playing the game. They rated their motivation and perseverance at playing the game at high and very high levels. They cited many game-play benefits such as getting a head start on their research, finding relevant sources from classmates’ submissions, becoming a more confident researcher, and being better prepared to write their papers as a result of using the Zotero citation management system.