Building the Games Students Want to Play: BiblioBouts Project Interim Report #5

Abstract

The University of Michigan’s School of Information and its partner, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, have undertaken the 4-year BiblioBouts Project (October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2012) to support the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the web-based BiblioBouts game to teach incoming undergraduate students information literacy skills and concepts. This fifth interim report describes the BiblioBouts Project team’s 12-month progress achieving the project’s 4 objectives: designing, developing, deploying, and evaluating the BiblioBouts game and recommending best practices for future information literacy games. This latest 12-month period was marked by extensive progress in the analysis of evaluation data from the testing of the beta 1.0 version of BiblioBouts and putting to work what was learned from this analysis in the design and development of the beta 2.0 version of BiblioBouts. Major tasks that will occupy the team for the next 12 months are demonstrating BiblioBouts’ learning goals, recruiting more instructors to incorporate BiblioBouts in their classes, seeking additional funding, and finding a future home for BiblioBouts. For additional information about game design, pedagogical goals, scoring, game play, project participants, and playing BiblioBouts in your course, consult the BiblioBouts Project web site (http://bibliobouts.si.umich.edu).