It is not one, but the entire package

Today our library hosted a workshop with two other Iowa Private college libraries. Each library shared what they were doing. They shared about marketing, research assignments and faculty collaboration. We shared about curriculum mapping, assessment and faculty collaboration. It was a good day and each library walked out with new ideas. Thankfully, some of those ideas are a result of my presentation on incoporating gaming strategies into instruction.

Much of what I presented was pulled from my LOEX and Iowa ACRL presentations, although refined more as a research of continued research and discussion. The key refinement that resulted from this workshop is the importance of the entire package.

The success of applying video game strategies into information literacy is a result of the entire package. The educational strategies that video games imply (critical thinking, practice, motivation, personalization, feedback, problem solving) are not unique. Librarians have worked on these for decades. The reason that video game strategies work for instruction is because the lessons do not just target 1 or 2 of these, but the lessons incorporate many of these skills at once and allow students to apply them together.

Video game strategies improve information literacy instruction, not by simply labeling a skill set we previously taught as a "game."
Video game strategies improve IL instruction when they are applied in unison and the lessons look at the strategies as an entire package.