>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I'm very excited to introduce you to today's presenters.

We're going to begin with Chris Coward, he's the Senior Principal Research Scientists at the University of Washington's Information School.

Dr. JinHa is the Associate Professor at the University of  Washington Information School, and Tracy Ashby, the Programming Supervisor at the Central Branch at the Calcasieu Public Library in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

We're thrilled to have will you all here and very excited about today's session.

Welcome, Chris.

>> CHRIS COWARD: Thank you for the introduction, and thank you WebJunction for hosting this seminar.

And thank you everyone for joining us today.

And for the launch of our Misinformation Escape Room.

We're excited to make this game available to libraries.

After two years of development and testing.

I'm very happy that my colleague Jin Ha Lee is here, and one of the librarians who piloted the game with us, Tracy Ashby.

Did I get the right slide?

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Can you go back one so I can do that -- I just wanted to quickly orient folks to the check mark that we want you to get in.

Have it ready for the next  slide.

So you should have permissions to use the annotation tools.

If you look to the -- maybe the far left, it's possible it's across the top, we've learned, if you click on that squiggle KOIN first, you'll -- icon  first, you'll see a set of tools appear at the far left.

Go to the square, and select the tiny arrow to the right of the square, where you'll see a submenu.

There you can check the check mark.

And once you have your check mark, feel free to click on the slide to practice.

Excellent.

It looks like folks are getting the hang of the check mark.

Perfect.

Once you've -- and it's possible that depending on your environment, you may not see the check mark.

So we'll just encourage you to play along, feel free to type into chat if you'd like to as well.

Let's hold our check marks and we'll move on to the activity.

>> CHRIS COWARD: You're very goods checkers.

All right.

We're going to start by playing a small piece of the game.

Take a look at these five  images.

And using your check mark, try to check the ones that you think are real.

I'm going to give you about 10, 15 seconds.

We're getting some consensus around a couple of the pictures.

But there are people who believe all of them could be real.

Let's see how well you did.

There are two real faces in this part of the puzzle.

The third and fourth one.

The rest are fake.

And in fact they are generated by a computer.

So they're not photo shopped, but they're computer generated images, and the -- and it's a technique that's often used to create fake profiles that show up in fake social media  accounts.

And -- which are then used to create social media Botts which are used to spread misinformation.

And every year the platforms, Facebook and Twitter, take down billions, that's with a B, fake accounts.

In fact, there are more fake accounts than there are real accounts.

Yet most people aren't aware of how sophisticated this technology has become.

And who would go through the trouble of examining a profile picture, especially when they're so small, or you're viewing it on your phone me?

And the point is to illustrate we're all susceptible to being fooled.

We're all prone to being fooled by misinformation.

This is one of the learning goals of the game.

To get people to reflect on their vulnerability.

So, yes, of course misinformation is a problem.

And librarians are on the front lines.

You have patrons who come to you for help, you know your communities inside and out.

And as such, it's probably not a surprise that librarians are uniquely positioned to help us take on this challenge.

Because it's really what you do every day.

So when we started out on this project, we interviewed many librarians.

They provided us with a number of insights, and it will be interesting to see how many of these match your experiences.

But they said things like, people are not interested in hearing things that challenge their viewpoints.

They want programs that are respectful.

Especially as misinformation has become a political and  polarizing topic.

Because you need to avoid coming across as preachy.

Librarians want resources that go into the inner workings of misinformation, the how of misinformation.

Such as the deep fake images I just showed, or social media botts.

And the thought here is that if people understand how bad actors can deceive you, then you'll be more skeptical and more cautious when you encounter questionable information online.

We also heard that librarians want programs that address misinformation indirectly perhaps not even using that term in a title or description.

For example, we've heard that librarians who have used -- had programs such as -- learned how to detect fake news, that only people who were already  concerned about the problem showed up, and they weren't reaching who were more vulnerable or potentially contributing to the problem.

It's the preaching to the choir effect.

And one librarian summed it up as, you have to hide the vegetables.

So before talking about the game itself, I want to spend a minute or two talking about the motivation behind this project and how research played a role in shaping it.

So in 2019, we established the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, as a place to study misinformation and develop ways to combat it.

This project is on that second slide, the what do we do about it side of the center.

And as part of that, one of the important priorities it is figuring out how to better equip individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to  successfully navigate misinformation in their daily lives?

So all of you are probably very familiar with information literacy.

It's a cornerstone of  librarianship, and it's simplified form it looks something like this.

We recognize or define an information need, we go out and find information employing different search strategies.

We evaluate the various sources we get and try to triangulate agreement, then we act upon that information, we use it to fill that information need.

And while this strategy has worked for ages, and it still does for most purposes, be it turns out there are many shortcomings when it comes to misinformation.

I'll just describe a couple of them.

First is this directional assumption.

Conventional information literacy presumes that the individual is the one with the agency, in who is seeking out the information.

Right?

That one-directional arrow.

However, misinformation often works in the opposite direction.

It's the information that is seeking out the individual.

And it does this through algorithmic targeting and other techniques.

Second is a positional assumption.

We tend to presume that you are an individual agent and you are working by yourself to find your information.

Of course now most people are working in social networks, and they're receiving information from friends, colleagues, classmates, and so this social nature of information undercuts some of the agency we might have when we're interacting with information on our own.

Third, a temporal assumption.

Informational literacy presumes that act of searching and evaluating can take place within a matter of minutes or even seconds.

Misinformation, however, is so powerful, because it works on a different time horizon.

Sometimes days, weeks, even months.

Of let's say you're researching a particular health topic and the first article or video you view presents a variety of explanations for that issue, including ones that might be more on the fringes.

But now that you've been marked, the bad actors can start to feed you other results, other sources that start to amplify maybe a fringe be viewpoint.

Until eventually you're hooked, because you don't even see it happening.

It's the going down the rabbit hole effect.

And then along with those other assumptions, we also know that conventional misinformation literacy largely assumes that the act of that whole information search process is a very rational and logical act.

However, misinformation again is powerful because it triggers emotional responses, or  capitalizes on our cognitive biases that are part of human nature.

For example, we know that people respond to emotional triggers.

And we know that negative emotions are more powerful than positive emotions.

Confirmation bias, for instance, where we tend to believe and look for evidence that supports our world views, that's human nature.

We've talked a little bit about the social nature of  information.

Which has to do with who do we trust and why?

And what social pressures we're under.

And identity, and who we are as humans also affects how we interact with information.

None of this is really fully covered in more conventional information literacy.

You may see check boxes, be sheets saying be careful of your emotions or be careful of your biases, but that -- is not very effective.

So we let -- what I just presented is a snippet of how we in the research community are studying the misinformation phenomenon.

And the types of insights we've been receiving from librarians.

To show you how do we go from research into the production of an actual product that we hope will be useful for libraries?

But let me make a final comment about skills here.

Skills are important.

I don't want to suggest otherwise.

And all the skills that are a part of information literacy equally important.

They still need to be taught and learned, libraries are critical places for this learning to occur.

The critique we bring is this, though.

We can't successfully address misinformation and the reasons people believe that things they do with skills alone, so I often ask audiences, who has a friend or family member who believes in a conspiracy theory, or something that has absolutely no basis in fact?

And when I ask that question, I can't see it here, almost everybody's hands go up.

Then I ask a second question.

I say, keep your hands up if you are able to use evidence-based reasoning to change that  person's mind.

At which point most hands, sometimes all hands go down.

And the point is, really that we're deceiving ourselves if we think the problem is one where we can double down on equipping people with the right skills.

We can't skill our way out of this problem.

Ass  some other misinformation researchers have mentioned in an article, while facts make an impression, they just don't matter for our decision making.

A conclusion that has a great deal of support in the psychological sciences.

That's a humbling quote.

So that was our background.

And as we move forward in the presentation, you'll see how we took this research and used it to shape the project.

So the goals that we then set out for this project are first, to raise awareness of misinformation technologies and techniques.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, the -- our belief is that by becoming aware of how misinformation works, whether they be misleading charts, deep fake videos, that that knowledge of how the technology works will help people become more resilient to misinformation.

Secondly, it's to encourage reflection on the role of their biases and emotions.

I talked about vulnerability.

Also confirmation bias.

And also the consequences of unwitnessingly sharing misinformation.

We can engineer all of these experiences in the context of the escape room.

And thirdly, it is to change people's attitudes towards misinformation and their behaviors.

So we want people to hopefully take this problem more seriously in society, and for them  themselves to be more cautious, more -- have a more skeptical mind-set and a healthy skepticism sense as they continue to navigate  information.

So I'll now turn it over to Jin Ha to explain why we believe a game has a lot of potential, and how we developed the escape room.

So over to you, Jin Ha.

>> JIN HA LEE: All right.

Thank you, Chris.

Let me move to the next slide.

So why are we approaching this complex problem of misinformation using a game?

Well, games offer an interactive experience.

So you aren't just learning about the problem, but you have a chance to fully immerse yourself in an alternate world.

And this can make the  experiences and take-aways much more memorable.

Games also offer an environment where it's okay to fail, and you're expected to fail.

I think all of us probably have some experiences of playing a game and either losing or failing, but still having a lot of fun.

And learning to do something better in the next round.

That vulnerability and learning are really important, especially as we engage in conversation about topics like  misinformation.

Games also provide opportunities for people to talk about difficult issues and to learn from each other.

And in this escape room, a team works together towards a common goal.

And this builds camaraderie, which provides a win cofor players to discuss topics from a less adversarial position.

And most importantly, games are fun.

So based on these attributes of games, we decided to create a misinformation escape room where players worked together to solve a series of puzzles, like the which face is real puzzle that you saw at the beginning of this presentation.

In our first game, the Euphorigen investigation, players have to figure out if a new supplement that the government wants to introduce into the water supply works as well as the company that created it claims.

And players have 45 minutes to track down whatever information they can on Euphorigen to uncover the truth and spread the word.

We have two versions of the  game.

In person and online.

And both can be hosted at libraries.

The in-person game is played primarily using paper printouts and pens or pencils.

And the online game is played over video conference software like Zoom using our website.

Library staff acts as the game host in both versions, so they're there to get everyone organized and help if anyone gets stuck.

There are two components to both versions of the escape room.

The game itself, and the  post-game debrief discussion.

Now, this is a unique and important aspect of our game that makes it successful, because when people are playing the game, they're often very, very focused on the game play.

So it's important to have the debrief session at the end to reflect and talk about what when has just happened in the game, and try to connect it with the players' experience with misinformation in their lives.

So that the learning can stick.

The total experience takes about an hour.

The game takes about 45 minutes to play, and then be a librarian hosts a 15-minute debrief.

And again, it is important to have librarians guide this debrief session, because they have the domain knowledge and expertise in helping people access, process, and evaluate information.

Now, we wanted to show you a quick sample puzzle to help you get a better -- help you get a better sense of how the online game looks like.

So this is the main room that players interact with.

And this would be what is shared through the screen share feature for other players to see.

At various points of the game, there will be different kinds of signals that highlight different objects in the room.

And at this point in the game you can see that there's a slight glow around the tablet on the desk.

So then the player would click on that tablet, then they are taken to the tablet screen.

And here we have a message at the top saying, who is the source of this information about Euphorigen?

I need to figure out which accounts are legitimate.

And then there's some explanation about how bought accounts use computer-generated images of people that don't exist.

And we provide some tips on how to tell which accounts or faces are real.

From here the players would click on part one.

Which would lead them to this screen.

So these faces should look familiar to all of you now.

Here you can see that for this puzzle, we give a little bit more assistance.

Since the faces are so tricky, after the players decide if a face is real or not, the photo is assigned a number.

Zero or one.

Zero for bot accounts and one for real accounts.

Then you combine the numbers together to determine the  letter.

So the code here is 00110.

And if you look at the key, you can see that the number corresponds to the letter F.

So the players then go back to the main screen and type F in the first letter box.

And once you complete all four parts, you have found the password and have solved the puzzle.

Then you move on to the next  one.

Now, this is where we're going to stop in the webinar, since we don't want to spoil the game for those of you who are going to play the game in the future, and I hope that includes everyone here at the webinar.

The current version of the game that we have is the result of extensive testing over the course of two years.

So in 2021, we conducted a pilot study locally with five Washington state libraries.

Then earlier this year, we worked with 10 libraries across the U.S., which you can see documented on this map.

This resulted in a total of 53 sessions with 211 players.

And we observed game play experiences and obtained user feedback through an online survey, and we also interviewed the librarians, which led to various improvements to the game itself, and also game host resources.

And we're currently in the process of analyzing all of this data for research papers to  come.

So here's one comment from the debrief session to illustrate what people take away from this game experience.

The participant here shared how the game made them think more about the visual component of misinformation, as they played the game.

And it also made them think about confirmation biases, and how sharing misinformation on social media is really cap  leading on trusted  relationships.

Another participant shared that the game pointed out to them how their bias might affect the way they process information.

And also made them realize how sophisticated this information strategies are.

They shared they have a tendency to think that hmm, people who are susceptible to misinformation are not very intelligent or educated.

But now they're able to recognize that they may also be vulnerable.

And this is exactly what we wanted the players to experience in the game, and it is great to see quotes like this coming from the players.

And now I am going to turn it over to Tracy Ashby, one of the librarians that participated in our nationwide study to talk about the experience of hosting the game at her library.

Tracy?

>> TRACY ASHBY: Thanks, Jin Ha.

Yes, my name is Tracy Ashby, and I am the programming supervisor at the Calcasieu Parish Public Library System in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

And I want to give a special thanks for allowing us to be here and share our experience.

So I want to quickly talk about why in particular we decided to host this game.

And share some of our patron experiences.

And tips in case you want to share and host your own game.

So when we first came across this ad to host information escape room, we knew this was an exciting opportunity we wanted to be a part of.

Last fall, like many public libraries nationwide, our library programming, minus some exceptions, remained virtual due to COVID.

What perhaps made our library system a little more unique was that in addition to COVID, our library branch in Lake Charles and our wider Calcasieu community, was also in recovery, and frankly still is, from four federally declared weather disasters within a 10-month period between 2020-2021.

Two hurricanes, a freeze, and a flood.

Which really meant that a large portion of our patrons were displaced, either living in temporary housing or relocated outside of a town, or state entirely.

Therefore, the fact that this was a virtual program made it so much more appealing as it could potentially reach those that did not immediately have access to our branch.

Because our community has gone through so many disasters, we have seen firsthand the importance of social media as a driver of news and information when other mediums become unavailable and/or inaccessible.

Therefore, we wanted to find and provide programming that both supports and develops digital literacy skills to combat misinformation.

And this game was a perfect match, as it provided a funlike game experience while still teaching effective methods to combat social media misinformation while not directly stating this was in fact an escape room designed to address misinformation.

The beauty of this experience was how eloquently this learning tool is disguised as a game.

As you can see, gee gaffically we're in the deep south, and because much this, at times we will immediately hit a barrier when broaching certain terms or subjects.

Such as fake news or misinformation.

So the question for us as our roles as librarians, was how do we educate our patrons on such an important and vital life skill without alienating certain groups because of stigmatized words?

Therefore, we were able to let the game do the talking as it is an and allowed us to tear down some of the barriers, put aside maybe your own personal politics and beliefs and have a very candid conversation.

Our sessions included a diverse range of ages among our patrons, anywhere from 14 years all the way to 65 plus.

And they were pretty evenly split between those who frequently used social media and those who did not.

And overall, everyone equally seemed to find the game very fun and very challenging, some of them, maybe our older patrons did seem to be a little more overwhelmed by the puzzles, particularly the math, we got a lot of oh, no, not math!

But what seemed to surprise our patrons the most about the tactics used in the games was both the deep fake videos we saw earlier, and the deep fake  video.

We had a lot of surprised faces during the puzzles at how realistic the fake photographs have become.

And the deep video was also another big surprise.

One patron stated they knew photo shop was around, but the videos took misinformation to a whole other level.

Many of our patrons were adamant that the video was fake, even before watching it.

And even when entering the game initially, many patrons shared that their assumption was Euphorigen was fake, as the name did not sound trustworthy, it sounded more like a drug, therefore they assumed the puzzles would lead them to that conclusion.

And in the debrief session, it kind of helped lead us to an open conversation about conversation bias and how easily we too can be fooled even when we do not believe ourselves to be susceptible.

Our open discussions led to one patron who said they realized now that they have been more willing to believe articles that back up their own beliefs.

And even a couple patrons who realized after the fact that they had shared misinformation and now may have realized the consequences of those actions.

Overall our patrons did enjoy their experiments and while they may not have signed up for the game specifically to learn anything new, each patron seemed to take away a skill that they were going to try to implement next time they were on social media.

So for those of you who get the opportunity to host a game, we highly recommend that you do that.

But if you do, a couple tips and tricks.

One of the first lessons we learned right away was the importance of emphasizing that players use a computer over a phone.

And have a working camera and mic.

Many of our patrons access the game on their phone, although our description of the game online does say computer, and therefore, they didn't have the same functionality.

And because this is a very collaborative game that requires a lot of communication between players, it is very important that if they can turn on their mic and camera, that they do so.

If not, it makes it just harder for them to work together.

And in fact, we did have one session that had two players only in the game, and one using the Zoom chat feature, and for this session, it really made them try and figure out the puzzle separately and then just sharing the answers.

So it was less enjoyable for the players, and they got a little bit less out of the experience overall.

Next the patron who shares their screen drives the user experience.

So ideally you want to let a patron who shares their screen for the entire group to be pretty tech savvy, as it makes the team collaborate more effectively, and get more out of the game play.

And finally, I think it's important that you as your role as host, also share your own game play experience.

It could be very intimidating in a Zoom game having hosts just stare at you while you play the game, and it can put additional pressure on them to do well.

We did have multiple patrons who said some of the puzzles were extremely challenging, and that they felt that they should have done better or solved it faster.

And it always seemed to be a comfort when we shared that we too were initially very overwhelmed and found these puzzles challenging.

So therefore it's ideal for you to try and get three to four players per session that way there's more players to bounce ideas on, and not so much falls on one individual person.

Overall this was not only a great learning experience for our patrons, but it was also a great team-building exercise for our programming department.

And with that, I will pass it back over to I believe Chris.

>> CHRIS COWARD: Thank you so much, Tracy.

Actually I wanted to reinforce a couple points or respond to a couple points that have -- that you mentioned and that have come up in chat.

One is that -- is to -- in are other games out there that have to do with misinformation.

And there's -- they're quite good games out there.

And we'll be sharing information about those as well.

What makes this one unique are a couple things.

One is the role of the  librarian.

I don't think any other game has a role where the librarian is adding their expertise into the game.

That's a really important piece as Tracy just described.

A second one is the be learning that can occur.

As Tracy mentioned, they have a chance to talk to each other and again, it's not an adult figure or a professional who is coming in to say this is about -- this is what you should be believing or taking away from something, but you're allowing people within your community to have a conversation.

And then that can allow for the sharing of information that can be very effective.

I also want to do a quick shout out to another core member of our team, Lindsey Morse, who is the Chief Creative Officer and Cofounder of Puzzle Break.

Their logo -- there it is.

They're the first escape room company in the United States and Lindsey comes with a wealth of experience.

We are not game -- we are not puzzle escape room puzzle designers, we brought in our experience, our knowledge around misinformation and be  narratives, but Lindsey is the one that was able to make sure that the games are fun.

Because that was a real -- a really important goal for us, is to make sure this is a game people would have fun with.

So the last part of the webinar I'm going to just share how you can get started with the Euphorigen investigation.

It's a couple of very simple steps, we have a project website at lokisloop.org.

And you go there to sign up to be a game host, you get  approved, change your password, and then you can sign in and start hosting.

Let me go through this step by step.

Again, we have a website and that's -- this morning there's also a little short four-minute video on there that describes the project, if you want to have other people get a taste of what this program is about.

You click the Become a Game Host button, and you fill out a form.

The form is very simple, we just ask for your name, email, name of your library or other organization, and we will then approve it on our end, hopefully within a one or two business days.

At that point you'll receive an email with your log-in information, and the request that you change your password.

Once you change your password, you now have an account.

The next time you -- let me go back two slides here.

At the bottom you'll see there's a way to log in.

Or here as well.

So the next time you go you'll want to log in as a game host with your password, and this will take you to the game host portal.

And this has all of the information that you'll need for both versions of the game.

Both the online and the  in-person versions of the game.

It will ask you to choose a game.

Right now it is just Euphorigen, but we will have other games available shortly.

Once you -- if you want to start a new game with your patrons, you simply click Start Game, it will take you to that room that Jin Ha showed earlier, and you copy the link and that will be the link that you put in a chat window with the players.

And I'm not sure if we mentioned it, but we typically find it works best with four to six players, but you can have as few as two or three.

But we wouldn't advise going above that.

Of course you can create breakout rooms, we've done sessions with 50 or 60 people, and we just create different breakout rooms.

We also have a lot of resources.

So we have the game guide, we have marketing resources as Tracy mentioned, we have language that allows you to describe the project or -- describe the game without using the word "misinformation," I think we say things like "you went to a world of social media Botts deep fakes and other forms of trickery."

So we're not -- that's a way to describe what the game is about without using some of those polarizing terms.

There's a debrief guide, this was as Tracy and Jin Ha mentioned, this is like I said prompts, questions that you as librarians can use when having that post-game discussion.

They are ones that we've found that elicit really good conversations and again, our librarians are very helpful in helping us curate some really good questions.

And there's also a resource kit.

The resource kit includes examples of the types of things that are in the game that are also in real life.

So, for example, there are many charts that are deceptive.

These are take-away Gwen from real examples.

Sometimes libraries show when they -- find when they show the real examples, the connections become even stronger for the players.

Similarly we very a set of resources for the in-person tool kit.

For this one you have to download a lot of PDFs and print them out, and those become the game materials.

You also need folders and pens.

But all things that could be assembled very inexpensively and very easily using standard materials.

So we have the instructions for how to assemble the puzzles, a host guide so you know how to facilitate the game.

And then all of the resources that you would need to be successful in that experience.

With that, I will say thank you to all of you.

Our project website is  lokisloop.org, you can contact us at lokisloop@uw.edu.

And I want to recognize our partners, this game is a project of many collaborations, Center for Informed Public, Technology and Social Change Group, both of those are at the University of  Washington information school and the Gamer Research Group, which is also at the Information School and Puzzle Break our collaborator with Lindsey Morse to create the puzzles.

And embarrassingly because this is being hosted at WebJunction, the logo we somehow oversight very embarrassing, but WebJunction of course has also been an extremely important partner in this expwroarn.

And to our sponsor IMLS, who has provided funding for us to both develop and test the game.

So with that, we will be open for questions.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Thank you so much, all three of you.

It's so exciting to see, and people are eager to play the game.

It's clear by the chat.

Some of you have been answering questions as we move through, and I saw Stacy, the project team person has been answering questions, but let's go ahead and cover some of those verbally so we can make sure that everyone hears the responses.

Here's one real quick, someone says, can we play the game first before hosting?

>> CHRIS COWARD: Yes.

We can do that.

We can definitely accommodate that.

So -- how is the best way to do that?

I think -- great first question.

You've stumped us.

[laughter]

I think go ahead and send us -- send an email to lokisloop, and I will -- we will give you a trial password, user name and password so you can give it a spin.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Fantastic.

I know that your goal is to be sure that folks have everything they need to do their  programming effectively, so that's one of the reasons why they asked that you begin by signing up to be a host and then all of the information that Chris just covered in terms of the resources are available once you've signed up.

So those will all be things that you can access and read through.

And I believe, let me just lump this question in there, in terms of the facilitator role and the materials, so all of those materials are there, and this question, do you have information in the facilitating materials on how to handle a big outsized response to being  tricked in the game?

>> CHRIS COWARD: Tracy, do you want to take that question?

>> TRACY ASHBY: Well, in our experience we did have quite a lot of patrons that ended up feeling kind of tricked.

Because we had a lot of our patrons going into this experience thinking immediately that Euphorigen was bad.

They're trying to poison the water are supply, so obviously it's bad.

And the twist of that is actually it was a good thing.

So there was a lot of, maybe like oh, I didn't expect it to go this way!

We certainly didn't encounter anyone angry about it.

People were just kind of shocked and were maybe just expecting the game to go a different direction.

But everyone seemed to be pretty happy with how it ended up in our perspective.

>> JIN HA LEE: I think that's also a benefit of having it in a game format, because things like this happen in games.

And I think people are sort of used to that experience.

Oh, yeah, I thought this was going to happen, but something else, right?

So it doesn't come across, like oh, we're trying to really trick you to do something harmful, it's like, no, this is a game.

So I think it helps.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the different  arrangements that you saw with your beta folks in terms of the number of folks on a team, the number of teams in an event, and then I'm curious if your debrief discussion, does that bring together all of the game players across teams, if you have multiple teams?

Or is that done just with those individual teams?

>> CHRIS COWARD: So the -- can you repeat the first part of the question again?

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I'm  just -- in terms of -- maybe -- some folks are asking what's the ideal size of a team, and how many teams have you seen your beta communities host?

>> CHRIS COWARD: Got it.

Yeah, so frankly, in the very first times we did it, this is a learning for the libraries, they capped their sign-ups at six people.

Well, that -- two people might show up, and so then we learned that you should probably, and Tracy would probably have advice as well, you at least for the online game should have a larger cap on your enrollment.

Also, it's very simple to create multiple teams.

So we've done events where we don't know how many people are going to show up, and using Zoom or Teams you can create as many breakout rooms as you need.

It's a little bit more taxing for the game host, because you often end up jumping around from room to room.

But I've done it for up to maybe five rooms at a time, typically if it's going to be more than that I make sure I have another game host or student to help with the game.

But it can be done using the breakout room feature.

But I would keep each individual team to no more than six people.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: That's really helpful.

>> TRACY ASHBY: If I can add, in our experience I think we put a maximum of 12 people total.

So that way ideally we could break it up into three rooms if we needed to, and we didn't have to do that in any of our cases, we were able to keep it to one room per game.

But that way things don't get out of hand.

And it's more intimate to where they feel more comfortable talking to each other and less shy if it's too big of a group.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: There are definitely lots much more nitty gritty questions, I'm thinking there might be a little FAQ that could come out of some of your questions.

So keep the questions coming.

We may not get to all of them, but as you know, the project is looking for your input, so we definitely want to hear from  you.

So there's -- sounds like there's some questions around how long it takes, the difference between the time it takes in the online version, is there a timer that limits how much time they're spending on each activity?

And then can you just talk a little bit about how that might differ in the in-person version, and then someone just asked a great question about can there be hybrid, some teams online, some teams in person?

And then I also am curious about that question in terms of if you gather folks across teams together for the debrief, I'm just curious about the sort of learning that could be shared across groups, across your teams as well.

So if anyone has thoughts on that as well.

>> JIN HA LEE: I can try to answer that.

I definitely think there can be some flexibility depending on your setting.

We have, for instance, had people test it in classrooms, where the classroom tends to be bigger than four to six people, right?

You have maybe 30, 40 people, we have done it in an in-person version which basically works like this, you hand out different packets to people to start with, and as they go through the game, they finish certain parts of the puzzle, they bring you this sheet of paper that has the password to you, and you check it.

And you hand out the next  packet.

So it runs like that in the  in-person version.

And just like the online  version, you can actually have multiple groups kind of going in the same room.

So you can do something similar in the library too.

Hybrid, theoretically, can be done, but just for the management sake, I think it's probably easier to either just go online or in person, unless you have additional people who can help you throughout the process to manage it.

A good question about the debrief piece, so the reason why we recommend this group size is there's definitely the piece about, like, we want people to play this game and we designed the game very carefully so that most of the experience like -- we want people to be able to escape.

They can escape in the 45 minutes.

The in-person version we notice that it tends to be I think a little faster than the online version, just because it's easier for us to look through things and manipulate it and just take notes.

So I think there is some variance, but -- like the reason we kept the group size was also because when we go to the debrief, we want people to be able to share information.

And so this information is related to their past experience with misinformation.

And people are much more willing to share these kind es of thoughts in a smaller group unless you're in a classroom setting, for instance, where it's natural for people to speak up in that big of a group.

So for that reason, I think it's helpful to just keep the size in a manageable way, but it's definitely possible to also bring all the groups together to talk about this.

It's not that it's impossible, it can also be possible to play this game alone, like these are all technically possible.

But for the ideal experience and learning, we recommend that group size.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Fantastic, that's really helpful.

There was a question about the account creation, if multiple librarians at one institution want to host a game, would each one create an account, or would you have a single account for their institution?

>> CHRIS COWARD: I would just responding to that in the chat.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Excellent.

>> CHRIS COWARD: I think it's -- it will be easier for  remembering passwords and things for each person to have an account.

But really, whatever works best for your library, different libraries have different ways they manage their online programs.

So it's really up to you.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Excellent.

That's great.

And again, don't be afraid to ask questions through the email as well if you have more questions before you want to sign up.

That's definitely what their hope is.

There was a quick question, and I saw a response, does the game gather personal information about the players?

And the answer was no.

Can libraries outside the U.S., like Canada, join in too?

>> CHRIS COWARD: Absolutely.

It's available for that.

We've actually also had organizations in other countries start to localize it in other languages.

So that will be the next stage of the project, to make that a little bit more streamlined.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Fantastic.

That's excellent.

And I love this idea, somebody said they were thinking they could try it at a staff meeting first, and see how hit unfolds with staff.

And then the question about how many times folks can use the game, or work through the game, is there any limitations on how many times they work through it?

>> CHRIS COWARD: Well, the game really only works -- once you've played the game you know the answers.

So any individual will not want to play the game more than once.

Just because they've already solved it.

So that's why we're also developing other escape rooms that take on different types of misinformation.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Go ahead.

>> CHRIS COWARD: That's fine.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: There was a question about how long the process was for creating the first game.

>> CHRIS COWARD: Well, we're researchers, so -- if we just developed the game straight up it probably would have just taken, I don't know, a few months, I'm guessing.

Our collaborator at Puzzle Break was, okay, when do we get to finalize this?

We're doing this as a research project as well, so we've had lots of other -- and we've involved students, we've made it a really good learning experience for our students.

So we started this project with the interviews of librarians and all that back at the very beginning of the pandemic.

That gives you a sense.

But I think going forward, like we just started the development process for a new escape room, what, two months ago, that's almost ready to go.

>> JIN HA LEE: Yeah.

So that was another project where we basically wanted to create a design template so that people can create different kind of escape room quicker that is more meaningful and relatable to different communities.

So we just created one that is situated in the K-Pop fandom context, because we thought it would have a great reach.

That design process, we only went through the four code design sessions, including the game play and evaluation.

It's about eight hours of code design work, and we have another game.

So it can definitely be streamlined now that we have this template.

So that's what we hope to achieve too.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Wonderful.

That answers the question about the 2.0.

I know people are very eager for what you have next.

And I'm excited to see and hear of libraries hosting programs with the investigation and  solving the misinformation mystery.

So thank you so much to all of you.

Again, this is an exciting project that you can sign up to host a game at your library, so be sure to follow up with any additional questions you have.

And we mentioned at one point the backgrounder that is available for you to talk about with -- get other folks on  board, the video is a really great way to provide an overview of the game to explain to folks why you want to do this at your library.

So thank you again so much to the team, to Tracy and all the work your team has done at your library.

I will follow up later today once the recording is posted in an email, and I'll automatically send you a certificate for  today.

And I'll send you as you leave WebEx today to a short survey.

You can complete it now or there will be a link in that email if you need to run.

But we really appreciate your feedback, it helps us provide feedback to the presenters as well as guide our ongoing programming.

So thank you again for being here, for sharing your great work, thanks to all of you who attended, and our captioner for providing captions today.

Everyone, have a great rest of your week.

And solve those escape room mysteries.

>> JIN HA LEE: Thank you all.