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Gaming (In)formation
Gamified, Transformational Learning in 
Research and Theology
Chris Rosser, Oklahoma Christian University

ABSTR AC T Gamification refers to the application of game design 
principles to non-game contexts, infusing education with curiosity, 
imagination, and play. Moreover, gameful design enables instruc-
tors to reimagine courses that incorporate basic game architec-
ture, story, and aesthetic. Below, theological librarian Chris Rosser 
demonstrates examples of gamified instruction within curricular 
and co-curricular contexts. First, Chris describes a research-oriented 
course that normalizes experience of the Bible as “strange” by 
framing students’ journey through texts around the “Hero’s Jour-
ney” construct. Second, he discusses a co-curricular escape room-
style online module that teaches and assesses information literacy 
outcomes as students escape from a virtual library. Gameful design 
in research instruction and theological education opens new hori-
zons for actualizing (in)formation as librarians-as-teachers form and 
inform those we serve. Readers will be well served by viewing three 
associated videos: Concept (bit.ly/gamifiedconcept); Curricular (bit.
ly/gamifiedcurricular); Co-curricular (bit.ly/gamifiedco-curricu-
lar). The videos and adapted slides (bit.ly/gamifiedcontent) greatly 
enhance comprehensibility of what follows.

MOVE 1: ADVENTURERS’ MAP

Greeting. Good afternoon, I’d like to thank each of you for joining this 
session entitled “Gaming (In)formation: Gamified, Transformational 
Learning in Research and Theology.” My name is Chris Rosser and 
I serve as theological librarian for the Beam Library at Oklahoma 
Christian University.

Let me begin with a question, see what you think: Would you 
rather we start today’s conversation with a banal, “Hello, friends, 
today we’re going to talk about gamification in research instruction 
and theological education”? Or would you find it more compelling 
if I began like this—“Hello, friends, adventurers, welcome to the 

http://bit.ly/gamifiedconcept
http://bit.ly/gamifiedcurricular
http://bit.ly/gamifiedcurricular
http://bit.ly/gamifiedco-curricular
http://bit.ly/gamifiedco-curricular
http://bit.ly/gamifiedcontent


Listen and Learn Sessions  175

Quill and Arrow, a virtual waystation where wayfarers gather, and 
though I can see only your pixelated selves, I discern that we are all 
children of blood and bone, all instruments of vengeance and virtue.” 
Or, what if I began with, “If you are a dreamer come in . . .”?

Certainly, some of you may find slight appropriation of Tomi 
Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone or quick allusion to Shel Silver-
stein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends off-putting—let’s please dispense 
with the kitsch and get down to the nitty gritty. But some of you—you 
dreamers, wishers, liars, hopers, prayers, magic bean buyers . . . you 
pretenders—you find something within stirred to life by invitation 
to follow the sidewalk to the place where learning and imagination 
intersect, perchance there to make a devil’s bargain at the crossroads.

Well, I want to invite you to play a game with me as we move 
through this presentation. As we move along, you’ll hear me offhand-
edly reference four monsters—the first letter of the name of each 
of these four monsters spells a word, and that word is key! Listen 
for the monster names, use the first letter of each name to discover 
our keyword, and escape this presentation unscathed! If you don’t 
find our keyword, alas, game over, you’ll end up in the place where 
recorded presentations go to die, rewatching and rewatching, tortur-
ously searching for the key, and who can be bothered with that? OK, 
friends, adventurers—let’s play, let’s begin.

First, we need to take a look at our map. Oh, the places we’ll go 
on this under-thirty-minute journey together! We’ll begin by kitting 
up here at the Quill and Arrow—we’ll gain some conceptual and 
pedagogical framework for thinking about gamification in educa-
tion. Then, we’ll begin our hero’s journey into a strange, new world 
by considering gamification in curricular spaces through looking at 
an example of a gamified course that invites students to inhabit story 
as the medium for learning. After that, we’ll think about gamification 
in co-curricular spaces as we visit a dojo of strange effects to sharpen 
skills and develop new competencies. And, finally, we’ll return here, 
to the Quill and Arrow, to contemplate experience, count treasure, 
and for a five-minute Q&A—but alas, friends, it’s BYOFA, bring your 
own flagons of ale.

MOVE 2: KITTING UP

We begin here at the Quill and Arrow, prepping for our journey 
primarily by gaining a grammar of the gamification of education. 



176  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

Simply put, gamification refers to the application of game-design 
principles to non-game contexts (Boskic and Hu 2015). Most of us 
consider information literacy instruction and theological research 
as non-game contexts, although some of us have attempted to spice 
up our teaching by incentivizing interaction with Snickers bars, or 
by turning students loose in the library for a noiseless scavenger 
hunt, with lurking library aides and a menace of shushing fingers 
at every tiptoed turn.

Gamifying a learning experience offers a means for imbuing 
education with curiosity, imagination, and play. It offers freedom 
to make mistakes (in a game, a mess-up means starting over again 
and again until you’ve gained the skills to level up), and gamifica-
tion incorporates a number of important pedagogical ideas, like 
intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, feedback and reward, and 
success versus resilience in the face of failure (Cohen 2011; Dichev 
and Dicheva 2017; Kapp 2012; McGonigal 2011). Through gamified 
learning, students are driven by desire to explore and overcome 
challenges, as well as by desire for rewards (e.g., points or badges 
that signify achievement). Students sharpen each other through 
enhanced collaboration and by playful competition. Students learn 
to problem-solve through trial and error, viewing failure as instruc-
tive rather than punitive. Gamification offers a powerful means for 
rethinking how we do teaching and learning.

At the same time, gamifying learning “is not a simple process and 
can be quite complicated to implement correctly. It is not simply a 
matter of adding common game elements, such as points, badges, 
and leaderboards, to existing processes or systems. Such a surface 
approach of gamifying existing systems translates to superficial 
benefits, if any” (Cheong, Filippou, and Cheong 2014, 233). For this 
reason, I’ve latched onto language offered by Kevin Bell, who writes 
about gamification in Educause Review. Bell has exchanged the term 

“gamification” for the concept of “gameful design.” He says, “The 
distinction is subtle but important. Whereas gamification equates 
to making a game of an activity, gameful design looks at the vari-
ous aspects and intrinsic motivators that are embedded in success-
ful games (and in other nongame events) and asks whether those 
elements can be replicated and woven into classroom and online 
activities . . . Gameful design thus looks at the elements that make 
games, or other forms of engagement, intriguing and then applies 
those principles to educational experiences” (Bell 2018, 42). This 



Listen and Learn Sessions  177

reframe—from gamification to gameful design—has been a game 
changer for my own teaching.

Before offering examples of gameful design, I want to describe a 
philosophy of teaching that undergirds these ideas about instruction, 
specifically how our identity as librarians-as-teachers—or perhaps 
teachers-as-librarians (however you see yourself) . . . how our iden-
tity as librarians and teachers—informs thinking about gamification. 

As you know, our students are whole people whose capacity to 
thrive and to understand, whose desire and imagination, are each 
shaped by transformative learning experiences both inside and 
outside our classrooms. And, as you also know, our libraries are 
co-curricular spaces for learning, which positions librarians-as-
teachers differently in relation to students from other professors 
and instructors on our campuses.

On our campuses, we talk a lot about faith and learning. It just 
so happens that, ideally, the center of learning is also the center of 
love: love and learning each requires encounter with that which 
is not self, something different, someone who is other. Encounter 
with difference is the beating heart of learning and love. So we’ve 
come to understand the library as a co-curricular third space, posi-
tioned outside the classroom yet integral to classroom learning and 
student success. 
In the Beam Library, where I work, in all we do we continue to 
conceptualize and emphasize our identity as third space on our 
campus, intentionally facilitating encounter between self (same-
ness) and neighbor (difference). In our context, this encounter is 
communicated by our catchword (in)formation, a simple reminder 
of who we are and how we serve as we live into our educational and 
spiritual aims. 

Our libraries exist at the intersection of information and forma-
tion: we build, maintain, and support our institution’s educational 
substructure; we also facilitate generative, loving, complex conver-
sations in generously hospitable spaces among all neighbors who 
inhabit our campus, virtually and in person. Our libraries exist as 
generous spaces for encounter, and formation is essential to the 
information we provide.

This understanding of the library infuses and electrifies our teach-
ing. Learning is an encounter between self (sameness) and other 
(difference). Whole-person learning considers body, mind, heart, 
and soul—aspects captured here as thriving, understanding, desir-



178  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

ing, and imagining. Through facilitated encounters between self and 
other, students enlarge capacity to thrive, broaden understanding, 
clarify desire, and electrify imagination, so that love and learning 
transform body, mind, heart, and spirit. I’m employing STUDIO as an 
acrostic, because studio calls to mind images of a workshop—scraps 
of wood litter and spilled paint stains the floor, creation-in-process 
decorates walls and tabletops, tools all around, a space made buzzy 
by messy creativity, the perfect space for kitting up before adventure.

Now, you may see yourself as mage or wandering bard, paladin, 
elf, thief, rogue, or cleric—I want to fully own the identity librarian-
as-teacher, teacher-as-librarian, and my purpose therefore is (in)
formation—to reach and transform a student’s heart, soul, mind, and 
strength. I recognize that the truest path to the heart is not through 
the head but through the gut, and gamification enables us to bring 
learning to spaces of desire. Transforming the whole person involves 
reorienting or clarifying desire so that students’ love (i.e., what they 
desire) vectors more truly toward God and neighbor. Love is there-
fore both the motivation and goal of teaching.

So I say this to underscore that gamification is not kitsch—we 
do not diminish ourselves as instructors by incorporating game-
ful design. Alas, perceptions that one-off info literacy courses or 
research workshops held in the dank dungeons of the co-curricular 
library are inferior to the pure light shining from curricular class-
rooms—such perception of inferiority is the great hydra we must 
battle (ahem, remember the game we’re playing: perception of infe-
riority is the great hydra we must battle, and hydra starts with “h”). 

Friends, fear not: the necromancy that brings old minds to new 
light is our sacred occupation, and those who wander the great halls 
of learning are shepherded to libraries. So, heroes, now that we are 
kitted up, let’s head out; gird yourselves, prepare for encounter.

MOVE 3: NORMALIZING THE STRANGE

Not too far along, down from the door where we began, we discover 
a strange, new world . . . and the first aspect of gameful design to 
which I’d like to draw your attention is structure—a basic course 
architecture. Second, we’ll pay attention to story—an imaginative 
world you’ll invite students to inhabit. And third, we’ll consider 
aesthetics—imagery that fosters vibrancy and play. To illustrate these 
design concepts, I’ll use a course I teach for our Graduate School of 



Listen and Learn Sessions  179

Theology entitled Introduction to Biblical and Theological Research. 
Here’s the course description:

IBTR empowers students by establishing a foundation for 
information literacy and biblical interpretation. Our semester’s 
journey takes us into an unexpected, “special world” of biblical 
studies: following the course of the Hero’s Journey, students 
progress through four learning modules that hone skills for critical 
thinking, reflective reading, skillful research, and the artful use 
of information, crucial competencies that empower success as 
students progress to completion of their graduate degree.

This course, IBTR, has two iterations—an eight-week fully online 
version and a full-semester, hybrid version that functions more like 
a “flipped classroom” in which face-to-face meetings offer a work-
shop for deepening understanding of the content students have 
engaged outside of class. Let me describe how IBTR incorporates 
gameful design.

First, we think about structure. While the course meets week-to-
week and moves linearly from task to task, module to module, activi-
ties and the course itself are suffused by the overarching model of 
Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” His book The Hero with a Thou-
sand Faces establishes a template of elements commonly found 
in epic story. Campbell’s model describes a cycle that progresses 
through the following steps: leaving the familiar or “status quo,” 
departing into the unfamiliar, encountering various trials and possi-
bly death, coming away from trials with treasure or “boon,” and 
returning home to share boon and discoveries. Now, I confess that, 
rather than taking students to the primary text, I introduce them to 
Campbell via a clever TedEd video that summarizes the Hero’s Jour-
ney and stirs imagination through provocative visuals.

Departure, initiation, return—that’s the Hero’s Journey in a 
nutshell, and it happens to be the spiraling cycle of experience that 
I’ve encountered in students who are just beginning graduate bibli-
cal studies. Especially for students who uncritically hold assump-
tions or strong convictions about the infallibility of their sacred text, 
graduate studies can present a jarring new landscape. Employing 
the Hero’s Journey model naturalizes our move into and through 
a “special world,” in which biblical texts become unfamiliar as we 
encounter diverse interpretive methods and unexpected readings 
of scripture. Indeed, as students experience the Hero’s Journey, they 
come to anticipate that texts will be unfamiliar and that new insight, 
like treasure, awaits discovery.



180  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

The Hero’s Journey model helps us normalize the strange. Expe-
riences in the special world of our journey can feel like a gut-punch 
challenge to assumptions about the Bible but, as we return to the 
model again and again throughout the course, students are asked 
to reflect on where they are and how they are feeling at various 
moments in our journey, engendering pastoral care as needed as we 
travel the special world together. Courage, God mend all!

So, including a basic game architecture—what I’m calling struc-
ture and flow—can be a significant aspect of gameful course design, 
in this case accomplished by incorporating a model that helps 
students conceptualize their journey through the course and beyond.  

Second, let’s think about story. Humans are storied creatures 
who inhabit storied worlds. The term student signifies a character 
in a drama; why not build out the stage upon which they’ll play? The 
imagined world of story is formative space, and what we learn in 
storied worlds follows us out. So, another important aspect of game-
ful design is developing a storied world for students to inhabit as they 
progress through the course.

In the case of IBTR, here is our game in three moves: Move 1—You 
are a hero named Krino; Move 2—Following the hours of the Hero’s 
Journey, make your way through an information dojo, honing skills 
for critical thinking (slicing skills for getting at what’s behind encoun-
tered texts), reflective reading (sharpening sense-making tools for 
interpreting texts), skillful research (investigative skills for locating 
needed information), and artful application (using honed skills to 
demonstrate heroic formation); and finally, Move 3—Undertake the 
dojo master’s final challenge to earn Krino’s badge!

Though students are not initially aware, krino is a form of the 
Greek root from which we get our term “critical thinking.” Students 
are invited to inhabit the character Krino—to don the hero’s garb, 
strap on the hero’s katana, and to see themselves as a character in a 
story as much as they are a student in a class. Our self-introductions 
include posting an avatar—an image that captures how we envision 
ourselves as Krino. Remarkably, framing the course with story does 
not require me to drastically revise or re-tool tasks and assignments 
so that everything is about this hero named Krino; rather, all learn-
ing takes place within the overarching narrative, and Krino becomes 
a touchstone throughout our time together, simply recalling students 
to the game we’re playing without the game becoming a distraction. 
So, another important aspect of gameful design is crafting an over-



Listen and Learn Sessions  181

arching story for students to inhabit and characters with whom they 
can identify as they journey through the course.

Third, let’s think about aesthetics, which is, in my opinion, an easy 
and compelling means for bringing game design to learning. Syllabus 
design itself invites play; perhaps more importantly, your learning 
management system can be embedded with imagery that resonates 
with and reminds students of the game they are playing. At my insti-
tution, we use Blackboard as our LMS, and GIFs or images can be 
embedded in tasks, announcements, and discussions. For IBTR, I 
created a “hero’s hangout”—a discussion forum re-tooled as a space 
where students encounter content beyond what’s been assigned; a 
space where they can meet, learn, ask questions, and discuss. And 
just as Mario munches mushrooms or Link rejuvenates with heart 
pieces, students in this game can earn Krino’s Token of Healing by 
going above and beyond the minimum discussion requirements—
Krino’s token of healing allows them to obliterate a missed discus-
sion post or shore up some extra points on an assignment. So, making 
good use of your LMS and syllabus by generating an aesthetic consis-
tent with the storied world you’ve crafted is another way to incorpo-
rate gameful design in your course.

At the beginning of this presentation, instead of merely welcom-
ing you to the Quill and Arrow with words, you found yourself visu-
ally dropped into a tavern space—perhaps as familiar as the Inn of 
the Prancing Pony—and it’s remarkable to me that 30 seconds in a 
fictive, digital tavern compellingly pulls us into the story world of 
the game we’re now playing. Luckily for us all, no sinister elves were 
lurking in our tavern waiting to lighten our purses (you may not 
think of elves as monsters, but just roll with me, it’s incredibly diffi-
cult to find a familiar monster name that begins with the letter “e”).

MOVE 4: DOJO OF STRANGE EFFECTS
(SHARPENING COMPETENCIES)

Our road goes ever on and on, and now we visit a dojo of strange 
effects. We’re calling this stop on our journey a “dojo of strange 
effects” because it’s off the well-worn and familiar paths. We visit 
this dojo with intention to sharpen a particular skill—to learn a 
special, new technique. Previously, I described gameful design in 
a for-credit course, where librarians-as-teachers lurk in classroom 
spaces. But much of our instructional work happens outside class-



182  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

rooms in co-curricular spaces, and so I’d like to illustrate gameful 
design for library-ronin—the wandering librarian without a class-
room-home. (Ronin is not a monster name; it’s a term that refers to a 
samurai without a lord or master. But keep your ears sharp, heroes—
monsters lurk! Also, if you are able, please forgive what must seem 
like blatant cultural appropriation; the world of gaming and gamers 
brims with oblivious Japan-ophiles).

Our dojo of strange effects is a space for sharpening info skills 
and for mastering research competencies outside the classroom, in 
the co-curricular regions where librarians-as-teachers live, move, 
and have our being. To illustrate co-curricular gameful design, let 
me describe a gamified learning module we developed last year to 
sharpen specific skills and competencies.

In Summer 2019, we were approached by our Freshman Experi-
ence team, who requested a Blackboard module to introduce new 
students to certain library services and initiate reflection about 
college-level research. We believed a gamified approach would 
enhance delivery, experience, and learning assessment; so, we 
decided upon an escape-room theme to provide the concept, atmo-
sphere, and architecture necessary for an enjoyable and instructive 
experience.

Students were dropped into the story by viewing the introduc-
tory video. There, they learned that an over-zealous campus patrol-
ler named Cam Raman had discovered them in the library after 
hours—and worse, Cam Raman had captured their friend, shuffled 
her back to the dorms, and confiscated her cell phone. But Cam 
Raman likes games, so he offers a sporting chance; to escape the 
library and retrieve their friend’s phone, they have to play the game 
and progress through challenge “rooms” to discover “keys”—words 
that become the terms of their escape.

So, let’s pause to recall our three aspects of gameful design: struc-
ture (or, basic architecture), story, and aesthetic. In this case, the 
basic architecture involves “rooms” through which students prog-
ress to the end of the game; as for the story, students find themselves 
trapped in a virtual library, and progression through each learning 
area invites discovery as students search “rooms” for “keys”; and the 
aesthetic relates to this maniacal Cam Raman who toys with trapped 
students and willy-nilly snatches their cell phones.

Using instructional videos we had previously developed, we artic-
ulated learning outcomes related to specific competencies. Students 



Listen and Learn Sessions  183

began in Blackboard. After accessing the module, they watched the 
initial video and were dropped into the story. Then they entered 
the first room, the dungeon, to discover the first key. After watching 
a brief video introducing the library homepage and discovery tool, 
students essentially moved through a series of linked Google Docs 
with Undertale-themed GIFs to create a sense of game-like movement 
and dynamism. The dungeon measured student comprehension of 
content from the Homepage video, and successful navigation of the 
dungeon resulted in discovery of the first key.

In the second room, students sharpened skills for critical ques-
tioning. After watching the video, they engaged a flipbook-themed 
task related to questioning—thinking about who, what, how, and 
why questions. Eventually, they discovered the second key at the 
end of the flipbook. Then, students entered the third room—an intro-
duction to plagiarism with a task that revealed the final key. With all 
the keys in hand, students moved to the final room—the boss battle. 

The final room consisted of learning assessment as well as a fill-
in-the-blank style question in which students submitted the discov-
ered keys (thereby “unlocking the door” for escape!). Up to this point, 
discovery of keys signified that students successfully moved through 
each room. In the final room—a simple test developed in Black-
board—students were prompted to respond to questions mapped 
to outcomes and then to submit the “keys.” Successful completion 
of the final room opened the door for escape! Time-on-task for the 
entire module was about 45 minutes. Following completion of the 
test (i.e., once the student escaped), a prompt encouraged students to 
visit the library front desk to fulfill the overarching story (you may 
remember) by retrieving their friend’s captured phone. Students 
who visited the front desk to claim the completion card were also 
given candy as a bonus treat.

In the end, Freshman Experience decided they didn’t want to 
include library information after all, so we piloted our escape-a-
virtual-library module as part of library instruction in a Freshman 
Composition class. Future iterations must better consider accessibil-
ity; in this first attempt, we were primarily after proof of concept. I 
envision developing a small battery of gamified modules like this for 
deployment in both curricular and co-curricular instruction. In true 
gamified fashion, successful completion of these modules will earn 
students a digital badge, although we currently have no University-
wide infrastructure to recognize co-curricular achievement, which 



184  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

is, dear friends, another problem for another presentation at another 
time. No need now to chase that rabbit trail—a trail that ends not 
with a furry friend but at the mouth of the terrible cave where the 
vicious Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog waits—yes, you heard it, another 
monster named, and that monster is rabbit (“rabbit” begins with “r”).

MOVE 5: ENCOUNTER AS BOON

So now, friends, adventurers, we come full circle and return to the 
Quill and Arrow, having moved through the forever-cycle of the 
Hero’s Journey, like the ouroboros who perpetually eats its own tail 
(our final monster! Ouroboros begins with “o,” by the way). And this 
brings us to the end of our quest, the game we’ve been playing today. 
You’ve done it! You’ve discovered the keyword—adventurers, you 
are all true heroes and, if we were in person and this wasn’t a digi-
tal tavern, well, I’d buy you all a round to celebrate the end of our 
hero’s journey together!

By incorporating gameful design, we are intentionally bring-
ing learning to spaces of desire, not least because humans are, 
after all, players—creatures-at-play—and all human activity is (or 
at least should be) infused with play (cf. Huizinga 2014). Gameful 
design in research instruction and theological education opens new 
horizons for actualizing (in)formation as we librarians-as-teach-
ers inhabit liminal spaces between curricular and co-curricular 
contexts, harbinging encounter in strange, special worlds, forming 
and informing those we serve, crafting whole-person learning of 
blood and bone, virtue and vengeance.

SELECT RESOURCES

Bell, Kevin. 2018. “Gameful Design: A Potential Game Changer.” 
Educause Review (May/June): 41–8.

Boskic, Natasha and Sharon Hu. 2015. “Gamification in Higher 
Education: How we Changed Roles.” Proceedings of The European 
Conference On Games Based Learning, 1741–8.

Campbell, Joseph. 2008. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato, CA: 
New World Library.

Cheong, Christopher, Justin Filippou, and France Cheong. 2014. 
“Towards the Gamification of Learning: Investigating Student 



Listen and Learn Sessions  185

Perceptions of Game Elements.” Journal of Information Systems 
Education, 25, no. 3: 233–44.

Cohen, Aaron M. 2011. “The Gamification of Education.” Futurist 45, 
no. 5: 16.

Dichev, Christo and Darina Dicheva. 2017. “Gamifying Education: 
What Is Known, What Is Believed and What Remains Uncertain: 
A Critical Review.” International Journal of Educational Technol-
ogy in Higher Education 14, no. 1: 1–36.

Huizinga, Johan. 2014. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-element in 
Culture. Boston: Beacon.

Kapp, Karl M. 2012. The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: 
Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education. 
San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better 
and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Press.


