Bibliography Bingo

My soon-to-be final year students have the option of starting their final year research projects this month, and I’m running a little ‘research boot camp’ to remind them of some of the procedures and share some extra tips and tricks in preparation for this. As the quality of secondary sources has been a weak point in the research my students typically produce, I don’t just remind them of the Fishscale of Academicness analogy and exercises we do in their first year, but I also wanted to give them a straightforward, but playful, reminder of some of the things to look out for when looking at (and for) sources.

How about a round of Bibliography Bingo? I produced a bingo card (download and try it for yourself here: TacAc Bibliography Bingo) with some things they might encounter in their sources, and some, such as index or reference list, that give hints that this might be an academic source. The idea is to use a card for each source encountered, and mark each of the spaces that apply. As I arranged the more academic clues in the middle 9 squares, scoring those squares gives a higher indication of an academic source having been found.

When I presented this to my students, one asked whether we were going to actually play a round of Bibliography Bingo. I have to admit that I had thought of this as a fun diagnostic tool, rather than turn it into an activity in class. This time round we didn’t have time, but next time a round of bingo is definitely on the cards!