Location
CTICC – Terrace room
Session Number
3C1
Keywords
Alternate Reality Game, library literacy, information literacy, transliteracy, games, gamification
Description
The Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria offers a unique undergraduate and post graduate programme in Multimedia which focuses on aspects of IT that require both creativity and logical thinking. These skills enable students to build and design multimedia products, thus consolidating technology and visual design. One of the Honours (fourth year) programme modules requires the students to consolidate and use all knowledge and skills obtained in the three year degree to successfully design and implement an Alternate Reality Game (ARG).
An ARG is a game that uses interactive fiction, integrated with reality, as its narrative and context. The game is played through interacting with multimedia. The players form a community that work together to solve puzzles and develop the narrative. The creation and design of puzzles and the narrative is up to the group of students and ranges from fictional to real life scenarios.Three ARGs have been designed and implemented by the Multimedia fourth year students in the last three years, all with varying success.
Within an African context, many students do not know how to use an academic library, as they often come from environments with poorly equipped school libraries. The University of Pretoria addresses this problem though a compulsory Information literacy module in Academic and Information Management. It is envisaged that the following ARG will supplement the skills taught to the students in this module through their participation in the game. This paper will address the design and use, as well as advantages and challenges, in utilising an ARG for teaching purposes.
Included in
THE DESIGN OF AN ALTERNATE REALITY GAME AS CAPSTONE COURSE IN A MULTIMEDIA POST-GRADUATE DEGREE
CTICC – Terrace room
The Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria offers a unique undergraduate and post graduate programme in Multimedia which focuses on aspects of IT that require both creativity and logical thinking. These skills enable students to build and design multimedia products, thus consolidating technology and visual design. One of the Honours (fourth year) programme modules requires the students to consolidate and use all knowledge and skills obtained in the three year degree to successfully design and implement an Alternate Reality Game (ARG).
An ARG is a game that uses interactive fiction, integrated with reality, as its narrative and context. The game is played through interacting with multimedia. The players form a community that work together to solve puzzles and develop the narrative. The creation and design of puzzles and the narrative is up to the group of students and ranges from fictional to real life scenarios.Three ARGs have been designed and implemented by the Multimedia fourth year students in the last three years, all with varying success.
Within an African context, many students do not know how to use an academic library, as they often come from environments with poorly equipped school libraries. The University of Pretoria addresses this problem though a compulsory Information literacy module in Academic and Information Management. It is envisaged that the following ARG will supplement the skills taught to the students in this module through their participation in the game. This paper will address the design and use, as well as advantages and challenges, in utilising an ARG for teaching purposes.