Exploring the Potential for Science-Themed Board Games in Science Classrooms

Note: There is no other application process necessary to attend this workshop other than registering for the workshop with your conference registration. If you are attending the workshop, we do ask that you submit the participation form to assist us with planning the workshop activities.

The intersection of games and learning has been an energetic area of research for the last decade. But most of this work has looked at video games, and there are other types of games, such as board games, that we can also consider as learning tools. Contemporary board games are becoming more popular and complex, and while they may lack the dynamism, interactivity, and youth appeal of video games, they can also offer a platform for complex cognition and metacognition, scientific ideas, collaborative activity, etc.

We are starting to explore the possible use of these types of complex, commercially available, science-themed board games as learning tools in middle and high school science classrooms. In this half-day workshop, we aim to engage workshop participants in playing, evaluating, and exploring ways of repurposing and using science-themed board games as learning tools in science classrooms and as objects of research inquiry. By doing so, we hope to explore issues related to how we integrate new media into learning contexts, what aspects of new media we need to identify and build on to do so, and other areas of inquiry of interest to the ICLS community (including the development of new collaborative projects).

As board gaming continues to see a resurgence in popularity and more science-themed board games are entering the marketplace, interested classroom teachers may want more resources to help them effectively use these types of games/new media as a tool for learning within their science curricula (Mayer & Harris, 2010). For example, teachers may be asking questions like:

• How do I ensure that the scientific images, facts, and principles that are presented within the game accurately reflect scientific phenomena and nature of science ideas, and if they do not, how do I support students in identifying and then problematizing any misrepresentations and errors?
• In addition to the board games, what types of supplementary resources do I need in order to ensure that the entire experience fully maps to my curricular learning outcomes and supports student learning?
• What kind of practical approaches do I take to implement board game play within the classroom environment, especially when I have to scale gameplay to multiple groups within a class and across classes?

We see great promise in using science-themed board games in the classroom, because of their engaging game dynamics, the high production quality of their materials and parts, their ubiquity, and their low cost relative to many digital technologies. We also recognize, that without analysis, the addition of supplementary resources and materials, and careful consideration of implementation strategies, the potential for science-themed board game play as a tool to mediate student learning in science classrooms could be lost.

We feel strongly that before we can start designing supplementary resources and supports to use in conjunction with these board games, we need to analyze different dimensions of those games. In order to do this, we are expanding on and using a framework developed by Klabbers (2003, 1996) that integrates semiotic and social system perspectives to analyze popular science-themed board games. Using this framework, workshop participants will consider, among other issues, how such games may connect to science concepts and standards, how they convey images of science and science practices, and how the game activity can be scaffolded to support science learning.