Every Step Counts: Adapting Qualtrics to Encourage Student Engagement in Library Orientations

Many libraries have adopted gamification strategies to enhance their orientation programmes, in the hope of encouraging better student engagement via goal-based design. A literature review reveals a lack of in-depth, granular data on participant behavior in these gamified activities, with evidence generally limited to post-event feedback and comments. Such data could potentially provide insights to help assess the extent to which orientation programme outcomes have been achieved. An example of an orientation activity with in-depth usage data is provided by Hong Kong Baptist University Library’s paperless, mobile-assisted Library Mystery Challenge (the Challenge). Designed using the popular data collection and analysis platform Qualtrics, the Challenge is presented to students as a scenario where they are tasked with helping the Library to find a missing student. Participants are given a series of clues that lead them to various locations, and at each stop they are provided with information on the nearby facilities and services. The Challenge has been run three times since Fall 2016, with close to 100% positive feedback from participants. Game design using Qualtrics is cost-effective, customizable and scalable, and has required minimal staffing resources. The authors will present the design principles of the Challenge, with a particular emphasis on how librarians analyzed student data recorded at each step of completion in the Challenge, for example, participation and retention, average time to completion, etc., and how these insights into student behavior were used to refine the user experience in subsequent iterations of the Challenge. Practical suggestions and advice for making informed decisions through the use of data analytics tools will also be shared