“Given the need to cultivate youth news literacy skills in our age of misinformation, and with current initiatives not fully addressing these needs, games can be an effective approach to foster news literacy skills.

So begins an essay by a team of Teachers College faculty members and students, published in the Harvard Kennedy School's Misinformation Review on LAMBOOZLED!, a teaching game they have developed to help young people sniff out fake news and in general become more astute consumers of information in print and online.

LAMBOOZLED!, as the authors explain, is “a news literacy card game where, in the tradition of deck-building games, players must put together the strongest “hands” of evidence surrounding particular news stories, in order to argue for the veracity (or lack thereof) of these stories and win the game.”

The authors of the article — titled “News Literacy Education in a Polarized Political Climate: How Games Can Teach Youth to Spot Misinformation” — are Yoo Kyung Chang, Lecturer in Communication, Media & Learning Technologies Design; Ioana Literat, Assistant Pofessor in the same program; and students Joseph Eisman, Jonathan Gardner, Charlotte Price, Amy Chapman and Azsaneé Truss. In their essay, they argue that the fictional narrative of LAMBOOZLED! “allowed students to learn about misinformation without the distraction of political stances and divisions, and deploying news literacy strategies as a winning strategy within the game allowed students to articulate and practice these skills.” However, they note that “teacher preparation for game-based learning mattered, and additional support is needed for integrating such games into school curricula.”

[LAMBOOZLED! will be published by Teachers College Press this coming fall. Read an article on the TC website about LAMBOOZLED! Read an article on the TC website about the issue of fake news and media literacy.]