When Active Learning Goes Flat: Using Gamification to Motivate Student Learners
California Conference on Library Instruction
Lindsey McLean and Elisa Slater Acosta
Designing and using active learning activities as a mode of instruction is integral to any information
literacy instruction program. The practice of developing active learning activities for instruction has
existed for multiple decades and has become such an important pedagogical tactic in information literacy
instruction that the practice was codified in 2003 by ACRL in their official Guidelines for Instruction
Programs in Academic Libraries (revised 2011). The core components of active learning include designing
scenarios within a course or library instruction session that allow students to have “doing experiences,”
“observing experiences,” or give students the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned (Fink,
2003). While these components form a solid foundation for designing active learning experiences, they
remain extremely broad and leave much room for experimentation and failure when designing wellfunctioning active learning experiences.
Although countless books, articles, and resources outline tested active learning activities specifically for
information literacy instruction, there is still a need to create innovative and unique activities that are
tied directly to an individual institution’s or course’s information literacy learning outcomes and goals.
The following discussion presents a case study describing how we developed an active learning
experience for a face-to-face library instruction session and then redesigned it by integrating relevant
gamification techniques as a way to increase student motivation and participation. Through this case
study, we will discuss relevant research and guidelines for incorporating gamification into learning
activities.
First, let us begin by providing the context surrounding our gamification experiment. In 2013, LMU
implemented a new core curriculum that included information literacy as one of the core learning
outcomes. A key element to the new core curriculum was a conscious shift from its previous curricular
configuration as a distributed discrete model to an integrative sequential model. This new approach
prioritizes the sequencing of learning outcomes in the curriculum (introduce, reinforce, enhance) and has
allowed the library to develop and implement a sequential three-tiered information literacy program. Our
information literacy program gives LMU students a foundation of non-disciplinary information literacy
practices and concepts through various modes of instruction before they are introduced to discipline
specific information literacy practices and concepts. The non-disciplinary information literacy instruction
is integrated in the student’s first year through their First Year Seminar and Rhetorical Arts courses. This
paper focuses specifically on an active learning experience built around one information literacy learning
outcome for the Rhetorical Arts course taken by second semester freshman.
As part of the three-tiered information literacy instruction program, we developed a face-to-face library
instruction session that all second semester freshmen attend as part of the Rhetorical Arts course. We
designed this session to help students meet the two information literacy learning outcomes for the
course. In these courses, students are expected to learn how to develop an appropriate research
strategy, successfully gather information to meet their information need, and apply a set of evaluative
criteria to the information they find. To demonstrate their learning, students have to craft/create an
annotated bibliography. For the evaluating sources learning outcome, we designed in the instruction
session an active learning exercise where the instruction librarian asks students to apply the RADAR
(Rationale, Authority, Date, Accuracy, and Relevance) framework (adapted from Mandalios, 2013) to a
peer reviewed journal article. When we first implemented this active learning exercise, we provided
students with an excerpt from an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
and an accompanying worksheet containing evaluative questions that corresponded with each element of
the RADAR framework. Students were then asked to independently assess the journal article and answer
all of the questions on the worksheet. This exercise was followed with a librarian-led discussion about
how the students answered the questions on the worksheet.
This experience was designed to be active; with students actually evaluating a source using the worksheet
and then reflecting on how they did it through the discussion. In theory, this was a well-thought out
active learning experience – it included both doing and reflecting. However, through experience and
anecdotal evidence, it became clear that this exercise was failing in the classroom. Librarians reported
that students were confused about what they were supposed to do, would barely finish the worksheet or
put minimal effort into it, and that the follow-up discussions were practically non-existent. It was time to
try something new.
We did not want to completely scrap the exercise and start from scratch, so we decided to experiment
with gamifying the activity. Before we began the gamification process, we felt it was important to have a
deeper understanding of what gamification is and is not in order to better communicate with our librarian
and faculty colleagues the purpose for taking on this approach. According to Kapp, “Gamification is using
game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote
learning, and solve problems… Gamification is not the superficial addition of points, rewards, and badges
to learning experiences”(2012). We also needed to define a clear goal for our gamification project so that
we could effectively design and evaluate the product (Kim, 2015). In our particular case, our goal was to
increase student motivation and engagement with the activity. At the conclusion of our gamification
experiment, we had revised our paper-based, active learning exercise into The RADAR Challenge
(http://electra.lmu.edu/TheRadarGame/story.html), an online game that students play during the library
instruction sessions for the Rhetorical Arts course.
In turning our paper worksheet into a digital game, we had to think about how game-based mechanics,
aesthetics, and game thinking could relate to our goal of increased student motivation and engagement
and incorporate the gamification techniques that proved useful. In our development process, we
consciously structured our instruction session to create an environment where game thinking can
emerge. Game thinking introduces cooperation, competition, storytelling, or exploration into boring or
routine experiences. Some of the most important components to game thinking and learning are
cooperation, competition, storytelling, or exploration. These components often transform boring or
routine experiences into moments of active learning, whether explicitly or implicitly. With this in mind, we
consciously structured our instruction session to create an environment where students had to work in
teams to complete the game and compete against the other teams in the class. These simple adjustments
added a sense of cooperation and competition to the learning environment. Noteworthy, this revised
learning environment took place in the classroom and not necessarily solely in the digital portion of the
game.
Another important element of gamification that we incorporated into The RADAR Challenge was gamebased mechanics. Game-based mechanics include any elements you may commonly find in a game like
badges, point levels, timers, progress bars, etc (Kapp, 2012). For our experiment, we elected to game
mechanics with a fairly basic system of badges and points values that function on a number of different
levels. In the game teams can earn either a diamond, gold, or silver star, each being worth different point
amounts, for every question we ask about the journal article. Teams are awarded a star based on how
many attempts they needed to answer the question correctly. More attempts to answer a question
correctly mean that the team earns a star of lower value. At the end of the game, the point values for
each star the team earned are added up and displayed as their final score. This simple structure allowed
us to provide both immediate feedback by awarding a team with a star or not, and reward effort by giving
students the opportunity to earn more points by really trying to get the question correct on the first
attempt.
The game itself was built using Articulate Storyline 1, an e-learning authoring tool. While Articulate
Storyline is most commonly used to build online tutorials, it is extremely flexible and has a powerful set of
functions that enables the designer to think beyond the traditional online tutorial format. All said and
done, building the initial game prototype using this software took about one week.i Additionally, the
game itself cost nothing to build as the library already owned licenses to the software.
The final step to this process was assessment: did gamifying the active learning experience actually
increase student motivation and engagement? To assess our efforts, we distributed two surveys: one to a
stratified random sample of 300 students enrolled in the Rhetorical Arts Course and another to all of the
librarians that taught three or more Rhetorical Arts library instruction sessions. We had a response rate of
47% for the student survey and 100% for the librarian survey. Because we implemented the RADAR
Challenge roughly halfway through the semester, about half of our student survey respondents played
the game. Of these respondents, 67% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “The RADAR
Challenge helped me evaluate sources.” The same percentage, 67%, reported that they liked playing the
RADAR Challenge. In the survey, we asked student respondents to write a comment about what they did
and did not like about the exercise. There were eight total comments about what the students did not
like about the game, four of which stated that it was “boring.” However, there were 32 comments about
what the students liked about the game, with 12 of those comments using the word “fun.” The other
common themes that emerged in the 32 comments were that students found the game useful and gave
them good practice evaluating sources. One student commented, “[The game] gave you practical
experience to test your knowledge about evaluating sources. It was hands on and showed you how much
you really know and understand what you are doing. “
The survey we administered to the librarians that taught a Rhetorical Arts library instruction session set
out to measure the librarian’s perception of student engagement, motivation, and discussion
participation and quality. The results of the survey showed that all of the librarians believed that the
game increased both student motivation and engagement and that four out of the five librarians believed
the use of the game in instruction increased the participation and quality of the discussion. We also asked
the librarians to comment on what they felt was the most useful thing that happened when they
introduced the game into the library instruction session. Most commonly, librarians found that the game
increased student participation in the exercise. One librarian mentioned, “[With the game] students do
their own work and don't sit there and do nothing at all, which happens with handout exercises.” Another
librarian commented that “Participation was definitely better and more enthusiastic. Also, the "cool"
aspect. Students were impressed that the library was able to create this game just for them.”
Throughout our entire gamification experiment, a number of important techniques of gamification
became quite clear to us as we augmented our instruction. First, developing a clear goal is so useful
because having clear objectives about what you hope to accomplish with gamification structures your
project and allows you to select the gamification techniques that are appropriate to your instructional
goals. Second, it became clear to us is that gamification does not have to be complicated, time consuming
or expensive. In fact, gamification can prove to be more effective if kept to simple techniques such as
incorporating friendly competition or using collaboration in the classroom to build something from
scratch (like a framework for evaluating sources). Lastly, we learned that gamification does not require
digital technology. Of course, in our case study we did utilize digital technology, but we also created a
“gamified” environment in the classroom by having students work in teams and compete against their
classmates. To assume that incorporating gamification into instruction requires building some
complicated simulated digital experience is unfruitful; in fact, gamification can happen, and has
happened, in various non-digital activities in face-to-face classroom environments. Gamification and
gaming—whether for librarians, students, or teachers—are creative and learning moments, moments rich
for discovery of what drives oneself and others. In the end, gamification for learning is a thoughtful
creation of an experience that motivates people to move through challenging or dry material. We are
very pleased with our gamification results and intend to expand our game to include a variety of sources
that students can choose to evaluate.
Works Cited
Association of College and Research Libraires. (2011, October). Guidelines for Instruction Programs in
Academic Libraries. Retrieved March 23, 2015, from
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/guidelinesinstruction
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences an integrated approach to designing college
courses (1st ed). San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.
Kapp, K. M. (2012). Gamification of Learning and Instruction : Game-Based Methods and Strategies for
Training and Education. Somerset, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/docDetail.action?docID=10560608
Kim, B. (2015). Designing Gamification in the Right Way. Library Technology Reports, 51(2), 29–35.
Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of
Information Science, 0165551513478889. http://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889
i
If you would like to download the raw Articulate Storyline file (must have Storyline 1 software) to adapt for your
own purposes, please contact Lindsey McLean at lindsey.mclean2@lmu.edu.