Adam Jerrett, Theo Bothma and Koos de Beer Navigating the Information Landscape of an Educational Alternate Reality Game Paper at BOBCATSSS 2017

1. Adam Jerrett
Theo JD Bothma
Koos de Beer
Department of Information Science
Navigating the Information Landscape of an Educational
Alternate Reality Game
BOBCATSSS 2017
Tampere, Finland
25-27 January 2017

2. Overview
• Introduction
• Background
• Research methodology
• The ARG – Nomad
• Findings

3. Introduction
• Information literacy is important for
navigating information landscapes
• Core information literacy is taught at a tertiary
level at UP
• Engagement suffer as students struggle to
understand importance of learning these skills
• Learning suffers with a lack of motivation
• Using ARGs to teach information literacy

4. Background - Why ARGs?
• ARGs are multimedia rich experiences
• ARGs unfold in both the digital and real world
• Navigating the landscape of an ARG requires
player collaboration
• The information landscape of an ARG
– game elements in both real and digital platforms
– a fragmented narrative scattered across these
platforms
– a large game world that requires collaboration to
make construct meaning

5. Background - Immersion through
integration
• ARG is immersive
• Game events feel more real
• Educational content can be integrated into
both the game and the real world
environment in which the content is applied

6. Background - Fragmented Narrative
• Solving the fragmentation of the narrative is one
way ARGs teach information literacy skills
– Locate the information by utilising search strategies
– Determine information relevance
– Retrieve relevant information
– Contextualise the information within the context of
the game
– Organise the information
• This information behaviour aids in completing
information seeking

7. Background - Genre scope and
collaboration
• Collaboration is required to construct a cohesive
narrative due to the wide scope of an ARG
• Individuals work together to construct this
“shared meaning”
• Achieved through communicating and examining
the game information
• “The exercising of such communication skills
reinforces the learning and exercise of the
information literacy skills”

8. Research methodology
How does the navigation of an ARG’s
information landscape engender the exercise of
information literacy competencies?
• Examine an ARG created for teaching
information literacy, Nomad
• Qualitative evaluation
• Focused on player experience

9. Nomad
• Players
– Students registered within a specific department
– Certain assumptions could be made
– Audience of 300, 90 unique users on the game site, 20
active players
• Narrative
– A time traveller needs help from the students
– Students access information from specific periods in
time to help him
– Narrative was driven by a fictional character
investigating the time traveller

10. Nomad
• Information landscape
– The game showed the game structure in an abstract and cryptic way
– Seeing game structure allowed for transparency
– Players unlocked, discovered and revealed nodes by participating in
the game

11. Nomad
• Game puzzles
– Reinforce information literacy skills
• Searching for books in the library (title, ISBN, etc.)
• Topical searches of online journals
• Referencing journal articles correctly
– Ciphers and riddles
– Aided by web based technology

12. Findings
• Players were aware of the educational nature
of the game - “when you’re playing a game,
you’re focused on the play, not the learning”
• The game provided engaging framing and
purpose to the skill exercises
• Provides authentic context in which to
practice learned skills

13. Thank you!
Questions / comments?
Adam.Jerrett@up.ac.za/ajerrett@vegaschool.com
Theo.Bothma@up.ac.za
Koos.debeer@up.ac.za