It's Active Learning

Students perform better when they actively engage with the information they are learning. Active learning promotes better recall, and understanding. It encourages the brain to process and store new information by activating cognitive and sensory networks and is the cornerstone of other progressive pedagogy, including problem-based learning and collaborative learning.

RefQuest provides the player an active learning experience by:

• Encouraging the player to learn by doing.
• Providing the player with customised, responsive and rapid feedback.
• Encouraging thoughtful planning and decision making.
• Demanding the player learns in order to succeed, because if they don’t learn they can’t progress to the next level.
• Mapping success and failure directly to the player’s actions and these are represented in the game.
• Giving the player positive feedback and rewards for progression.
• Offering consequences for failure combined with constructive feedback and correction. These are not abstract or hypothetical; they are represented in the game.
• Investing their ego and self-image into a character and experience players can identify with.
• Creating an engaging narrative and fun experience that provides the player a scenario that generates emotional responses and enjoyment.

Supported Referencing Styles

• Harvard WesternSydU
• AGLC
• APA
• Chicago
• Vancouver
• MLA

Built on Pedagogy

The structure of games should mirror good pedagogy, offering progressive problem solving and scaffolded learning.

RefQuest embodies all phases of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction (events that activate processes needed for effective learning). These events are: gain attention, inform learner of objectives, stimulate recall of prior learning, present stimulus material, provide learner guidance, elicit performance, provide feedback, assess performance, and enhance retention and transfer.

RefQuest is also built on intrinsic motivational concepts and models of self-regulated learning with just the right amount of challenge, support, and feedback, progressively rewarding mastery with new challenges. This experience parallels other known optimal states of happiness, or flow (as determined by Csikszentmihalyi).

Loved by academics and students

About

A collaboration between The Library and Learning Futures

RefQuest is an online educational game available to all Western Sydney University (WSU) students to learn how to correctly reference, to provide evidence in their work and acknowledge contributions.

The game is built on robust and proven active learning and pedagogical principles that scaffold and guide students through a fun and engaging experience. RefQuest teaches players the patterns of referencing and challenges their knowledge with multiple activities which have increasing difficulty.

RefQuest was co-developed by Learning Futures and the Library at Western Sydney University, and is based on The Great Referencing Game that was developed by WSU Library staff as a classroom activity, which was adapted from Chasing Citations by Ryan L Sittler in McDevitt, TR, 2011, Let the Games Begin!