Who Said It? Using Role-Playing Games to Understand Perspective and Evaluate Sources

Attendees will participate in a role-playing game (RPG) that demonstrates the contextual nature of information and the importance of evaluating resources. We will invite participants to provide feedback about the game and share ideas and strategies for gamification in Information Literacy instruction.

We created an RPG to help students understand different information contexts and discern motivation and bias. In the game, students are assigned roles of different information providers: a salesperson, a journalist, a non-fiction writer, an influencer, a scholar, and a conspiracy theorist. There are printed cards for each of these roles outlining the creator’s motives, how “creative” they can be with the facts, and whether their information gets professionally edited. We give the students a prompt with the basic facts, and they write a blurb using the rules for their kind of content creator. Next, each student guesses which role each participant represented. Discussion and laughter follow.

This game is an interactive opportunity for students to engage with concepts in the ACRL Frame “Authority is Constructed and Contextual.” Although the game focuses on several types of content creators, we also point out that diverse backgrounds and life experiences can influence information content. Students come away from the lesson understanding the importance of critically evaluating resources – a useful skill inside and outside the classroom.