Information Literacy: Moving Toward Sustainability

Abstract

Today’s information society has brought up a new generation of learners that demands more dynamic and interactive teaching approaches and has to be equipped with new types of skills. Especially in education, gamification has been an emerging trend in the last few years. Game elements and patterns are used to engage students in certain actions and shape their behavior. However, there is a distinction between purely reward-based and meaningful gamification, which can result in high quality learning. The aim of this study is to illustrate the positive effect that meaningful implementation of game elements and patterns can have on behavioral outcomes. Looking at the results of a comprehensive evaluation of The Legend of Zyren reveals that a clever way of implementing the content into the gaming context has a strong influence on both personal engagement and content mastery. The results illustrate that students who were more engaged in the game also had significantly better results in the final exam on information literacy.