Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Factitious is a game for testing your skill at identifying fake and misleading news stories. The game was developed by the American University Game Lab and the American University's School of Communication.

Information Fallout is a narrative-based learning tool designed to introduce information literacy skills to students. It is based around attaining and using six “Info Tactics:”

• Consider the context of a source when evaluating it.
• Consider the creation process when looking at a source.
• Give credit to other people’s ideas.
• Ask questions for better research.
• Appreciate that research evolves over time through the contribution of many researchers.
• Seek out different sources and types of sources.

Those Info Tactics align to the six concepts outlined in the ACRL “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.” Here are those concepts with related Info Tactics in parentheses:  

• Authority Is Constructed and Contextual (Consider the context of a source when evaluating it.)
• Information Creation as a Process (Consider the creation process when looking at a source.)
• Information Has Value (Give credit to other people’s ideas.)
• Research as Inquiry (Ask questions for better research.)
• Scholarship as Conversation (Appreciate that research evolves over time through the contribution of many researchers.)
• Searching as Strategic Exploration (Seek out different sources and types of sources.)

Information Fallout is meant to introduce these information literacy concepts to students. Librarians, teachers, instructors, and other educators should pair the game with further discussion or lessons or assignments to more fully articulate the details of the framework skills.

Learning Objectives

Information Fallout sets out six learning objectives for students. These are assessed by a series of multiple choice questions embedded within the narrative. To proceed through the narrative, students must answer those questions correctly.

• The student will be able to demonstrate that context influences authority.
• The student will be able to identify an element of the creation process that may be an indicator of quality for school work.
• The student will be able to assert the importance of citing sources.
• The student will be able to rank a research topic based on a question as being more effective than one that provides an overview.
• The student will be able to articulate that scholarship evolves over time.
• The student will be able to identify one or more reasons why it is important to consult more than one source when conducting research.