I'm Andrew Walsh, an Academic Librarian and National Teaching Fellow.

I want to get students excited about developing their information literacy, but let's face it - that's a losing battle... Instead, how about making information literacy instruction as interesting, active and engaging as possible and make sure some deep learning takes place?

Once of the ways I've been trying to do this recently is through games. This crowdfunding attempt is to help develop a non-digital, quick and easy to use card game that can be used in one-shot, 50 minute information literacy sessions.

The game, SEEK!, has simple rules and can be played in a few minutes. It presents a lot of information useful to anyone improving their search skills during the game and sets the scene for a short class discussion (5 to 10 minutes, though this depends on the size of the class). The game, discussion et al., should take 15 to 20 minutes, which is roughly the time I spend teaching this topic using other methods as part of a general information skills class. It will come with full instructions on how to use it as part of a class, whether you are a teacher, lecturer, librarian, or learning developer.

My two aims for this crowd funding are:

1. To make the game accessible to as many librarians, teachers and learning developers as possible.
2. I'd like to cover as much of the design costs as possible - with the ideal being enough of a surplus to cover some of the costs of creating a second card game!

This funding will hopefully pay for some of the design work which would otherwise come out of my own pocket. I want the game to look professional to help engage learners, so a freelance graphic designer and former librarian (Tanya - her details are now appearing as part of the team!) is currently creating a great looking set of cards I'm play testing!

The majority of the costs for the printed packs are printing and postage & packing, with a small contribution towards the design work. I'm hoping the biggest contribution towards the design costs will be from the digital only rewards, which will allow you to print off as many copies as you want!

If successful, I'll add in some more stretch goals... look out for those over the coming days and weeks :)

Stretch Goal!

Probably being way too optimistic suggesting this, but how about a stretch goal? If we get to $800 (just $50 over the campaign target), I'll send a SECOND game (to print yourself) to all the $20 and up supporters. That's right, two information literacy games... The second one will be based around recognising the need for, and difference between, different sources of information. More details to follow if we get close to the target!

We’re within reach of the first stretch goal, thanks to all the lovely people contributing to SEEK! So, how about some more details? If we hit $800 I’ll turn another information literacy game I’ve playtested into a proper, formal and good looking game. Called SOURCES!, it is based on collecting sets of resources (cards describing Newspapers, Websites, Books, Journal Articles, etc.) to build sets and collect points. It provides an opportunity to get a class to think about the different attributes of types of information sources and what they may be good for. Cards describing good quality sources are much harder to find than low quality sources (websites, blogs, etc.), but are needed to build high value sets. Different combinations of resources are needed for different types of set. Together the game makes players consider some key resources and the need for different mixes of resources for different situations, plus the need to seek out better quality resources for the best results (in this case winning the game!).