Gary Maixner has been teaching library skills to first- and second-year students for many years. At his previous institution he visited classes at the beginning of each semester, giving the same lecture about library resources, search skills, and evaluating sources. Students were often disengaged, so he and Creative Learning Librarian Mari Kermit-Canfield, began thinking about alternative ways to help students learn this important information.
Maixner and Kermit-Canfield are both interested in table-top games, so they came up with the idea to develop a card game that students could play to learn about library tools and resources. The goals were to increase student engagement and reduce the amount of repetitive lecturing for librarians.
In the game they developed, called Search & Destroy, students actively search library databases based on the cards they draw from the deck:
- Each student draws a starting card to determine the topic they are searching for
- They then search the library database to see how many results it returns
- Each turn adds additional topic or modifier cards, making the search increasingly specific
- The last student with search results wins
At IU Indianapolis, Gary continues to see that students playing Search & Destroy are engaged with the topics and with each other. The cards are an equalizer, as they determine what the students search, and the combination of cards determines when they run out of results. Even where there are varying levels of experience with library search tools, it doesn't affect the outcome of the game.
The results from Search & Destroy led to his creation of another card game on evaluating source materials called Trust Issues. Currently Gary is working on a third card game, called Connection Draft!, to teach mind mapping skills that can be used with both undergraduate and graduate students. All the games are discipline-agnostic, so they work well in any class where students need these skills.
Card games like these are a low-tech way to engage students in in-person classes. If you are teaching at IU Indianapolis and would like Gary to visit your class, you can reach him at gmaixner@iu.edu. There are also copies of the card games to check out from IU Indy's University Library, if you'd like to look at them or use them with your class yourself. If you are at a different IU campus, you can purchase Search & Destroy and Trust Issues at the print-on-demand game website The Game Crafter.
