low-stakes

Submitted by Lauren deLaubell on January 17th, 2025

Short Description:

The most powerful wizards have gathered to battle one another. Only one will win. Wizards must use reliable sources to research incantations for the battle, or their spells will fizzle. Truly wise wizards must learn to tell the difference.

Research Wizards is an information literacy card game designed to teach students ages 12+ about source evaluation. Research Wizards corresponds to the Frame Authority Is Constructed and Contextual, from the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Players will discuss and challenge the relative value of various sources, each representing a different suit in the game. The game includes four major actions/phases: Parley, when players discuss and decide for themselves the relative value of each suit; Battle, which includes competition, player actions, and Challenges; Vengeance, for eliminated players to impact and speed up the remainder of the game; and Victory.

The Research Wizards website contains free game files, player directions, and printing tips for librarians and teachers who wish to use the game in their classrooms. The website includes an editable, Microsoft Publisher version of the game. Noncommercial use of the game is free for educational purposes with attribution to the author. Librarians and teachers are encouraged to adapt the game as needed for their subject areas, student needs, and as the sources in the game evolve over time. Adaptations must be shared under the same terms.

Players: 3-5 per deck

Play Time: 20-30 minutes, plus discussion

Research Wizards by Lauren deLaubell is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Attachments:

Attachment	Size
Player directionsdisplayed 1618 times	1.02 MB
Printing tipsdisplayed 1531 times	26.71 KB
Card deckdisplayed 1590 times	2.51 MB

Relevant links:

Research Wizards

Learning Outcomes:

- Wizards will define a variety of traditional and emerging information formats.
- Wizards will compare a variety of information formats and discuss their relative reliability.
- Wizards will explore the variation in quality found within specific categories of information (e.g., the wildcard of using resources located by or generated with artificial intelligence).

Information Literacy concepts:

Individual or Group:

Group

Ability Level:

Potential Pitfalls and Teaching Tips:

It is recommended to review directions out loud with students, with pauses for students to sort their decks and conduct the Parley phase of play. To contextualize and reinforce learning, it is recommended to conclude the game with discussion questions; sample questions are provided at the bottom of the player directions file but may be adjusted as needed.

Suggested Citation:

deLaubell, Lauren. "Research Wizards." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2025. https://projectcora.org/assignment/research-wizards.

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All assignments contributed to this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike United States License

Submitted by Natalie Mahan on August 20th, 2019

Short Description:

This is a simple activity intended to warm up students, break the ice, and introduce the concept of keyword searching. Ask students to come up with a single word search that gives zero results. It’s harder than it sounds. It may be too elementary for graduate students or upperclassmen; use your judgement about students’ abilities and familiarity with searching. This activity can be a great segue in to a lesson on keyword development, Boolean operators, popular terminology vs. technical jargon, and the differences between different kinds of databases.

Attachments:

Attachment	Size
Stump the Database.docxdisplayed 1106 times	13.19 KB

Learning Outcomes:

Students will discuss the importance of keywords in database searching.
Students will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different search strategies.

Discipline:

Multidisciplinary

Information Literacy concepts:

Individual or Group:

Ability Level:

Tags:

Course Context (e.g. how it was implemented or integrated):

Additional Instructor Resources (e.g. in-class activities, worksheets, scaffolding applications, supplemental modules, further readings, etc.):

Potential Pitfalls and Teaching Tips:

Suggested Citation:

Mahan, Natalie. "Stump the Database." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2019. https://projectcora.org/assignment/stump-database.

All assignments contributed to this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike United States License

Submitted by Chelsea Heinbach on May 16th, 2019

Short Description:

This low-stakes, in-class assignment is designed to help first-year seminar students learn about important library resources and present their findings to their fellow students. In teams, students complete a series of authentic research tasks (called challenges) such as selecting and citing images from our digital collection and using our discovery tool to find books on the library shelves. Each team is also assigned a unique challenge to learn more about the library. Students spend the last twenty-five minutes of class designing a quick presentation in Canva and using it to teach each other about what they learned through their unique challenges.

Attachments:

Attachment	Size
Lesson Plandisplayed 927 times	17.1 KB
Activity Challengesdisplayed 882 times	109.77 KB

Learning Outcomes:

Students will identify uses for library technologies and resources in order to teach their classmates. Students will examine metadata from an image found via the UNLV digital collections in order to write an accurate image citation. Students will design a slide in Canva that showcases library resources and technologies.

Discipline:

Communication Studies Liberal Studies Library and Information Science Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing

Information Literacy concepts:

Individual or Group:

Group

Ability Level:

Tags:

Course Context (e.g. how it was implemented or integrated):

We used this lesson plan to provide library instruction for a first-year seminar for liberal arts students. The course was loosely themed around the idea of “a domain of one’s own,” i.e., equipping students to become thoughtful creators of digital content. The session was not tied to a particular research assignment, but the course instructor thought it was important to provide students with a general introduction to the library. The course instructor gave Mark few parameters for developing the lesson, instead asking Mark “to just tell them about the library.” Mark decided to collaborate with Brittany and Chelsea to transform the generic “welcome to the library” session that the instructor had asked for into something more vibrant.

Assessment or Criteria for Success

Assessment Short Description:

Student groups checked in with us as they completed the succession of challenges in order to move on to the next stage. We also reviewed students’ presentations and Canva slides for evidence that students fulfilled our learning outcomes.

Potential Pitfalls and Teaching Tips:

Although the goal of this lesson plan is to provide a casual, low-stakes learning experience for the students, the constraints of time and logistics require the instructors to undertake careful planning in advance. The clearer you can make your directions for each challenge, the more time students can devote to discovering library resources and sharing what they learned. You will probably want a second instructor to help students with logistical questions. If you cannot get an additional librarian colleague, an experienced student worker or even the course instructor could fill this role, but make sure that they understand the plan in advance. Try to avoid extending the lesson plan by shifting the presentation to an additional class session, as it will likely cause students to overthink what is meant to be a low-stakes and engaging activity.

Collaborators:

Mark Lenker

Brittany Fiedler

Suggested Citation:

Heinbach, Chelsea. "A Peer-to-Peer Introduction to the University Library." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2019. https://projectcora.org/assignment/peer-peer-introduction-university-library.

All assignments contributed to this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike United States License