Board games can combine education and fun in class!

Author: Samara Carbone

Recently, the board games have returned and boomed as a popular entertainment tool, especially among the adult public. In the fundamental educational sector, the use of board games is not a new tool, however, its use among adults is growing as teachers realize it as a powerful educational tool. This is the case of two free board games developed at the Federal University of Uberlandia in Brazil, which are: Save the City! and Air Quality Board Game, both games were created to grow awareness and knowledge concerning the human impacts on the urban environment.

The Air Quality Board Game (AQBG, Rodrigues 2018; Rodrigues et al., submitted) aims to present and raise awareness among the players about air quality and the adverse effects that air pollution can cause. The AQBG consists of a collaborative board game where players need to work as a team to achieve the proposed goal, which is to improve the air quality of the city. Typically, in role-playing games (RPG), the players roll dice and let them decide on the success of performing a specific action, such as, to open a door, buy an item or attack an opponent. In the AQBG, the players have to answer questions and to solve problems related to the topic in order to succeed in such actions. The game was designed to be played by teams from three to six players. In this version, the players may choose among the following skills: implementation of public policies, climate geoengineering, answering questions at an easier level, receiving extra action and/or lives. The background scenery is a medium sized city (500,000 inhabitants) suffering from air quality degradation and the players are this citizen’s last hope!

The board was printed in carton paper or fabric and is divided into three districts, which are subdivided into 90 moving zones altogether, Figure 1. The districts are industrial, city center, and residential neighborhood. In the industrial district there are different industries installed, such as, cement, smelter, food factory, paper and cellulose factory, coal power plant, etc. The teacher decides on the type of industries. The players can move between the districts through the moving zones. The districts emit air pollutants, according to its source type, in the pollution turn. There are special tokens spread over the city (shops, cars, buses, industries) which will emit pollutants to the atmosphere or allow the players to can buy items, receive advices or heal from the adverse health effects of poor air quality.

The game is played in rounds. Each round is composed of five turns. The first turn is the players’ turn. Here each player has three free actions. It is considered an action to move between zones, to purchase items, ask for assistance, use/install/replace instrumentation and implement public policies. The second turn is the pollution turn. That is when the pollutants spread over the city. The pollutants move one zone per round, depending on the atmospheric conditions, Figure 2. In the third turn, new pollutants are emitted to the atmosphere by the polluting zones. In the fourth turn the players must evaluate the amount of air pollutants, by counting the number of cubes in each district, and lose points of health. And finally in the last turn they should advance with the round indicator to the next one. The main goal is to save the city from air quality degradation before the players die from the adverse health effects. Because at every round there are more pollutants emitted by the specific polluting zones, the players must decide on how to act in order to mitigate the air pollution. Each player loses extra life when pollutants reach the national air quality reference levels.

One of the ideas under this methodology is to make it as versatile and adaptable as possible. Thus, it could be used in multiple environments. In addition, different items can be included as cards, different emitting sources, and the questions could be adapted to different levels of difficulty on the topic. Everything could be adjusted to the teacher educational plan, considering local and regional differences. The game is currently in use as a grading step in the Air Pollution and Control undergraduate subject at the Environmental and Sanitary Engineering at the Federal University of Uberlandia in the city of Uberlandia in Brazil and is very popular among the students, Figure 3. The Portuguese and English versions are free and available at https://peteas.weebly.com/jogos-educacionais.html.

Figure 1 – The board game contains 90 moving zones (small squares), 3 districts, the city center (red rectangle), industrial (blue rectangle) and residential (surrounding the other districts) and 10 rounds all together.

Figure 2 – Wind rose, the arrow provides the direction the pollutants should spread over the board. It is used in the second turn every round.

The AQBG also inspired the teacher and students to develop a broader version including the impacts of the liquid and solid wastes in cities, and that was how the Save the City! was born (Rocha 2021; Rocha & Carbone 2021). Now, not only the atmospheric pollutants should be considered, but also the solid and liquid pollutants generated by sources such as, grocery shops, houses, landfills, football stadium, agriculture and so on, Figure 4. The pollutants were divided into three main categories, solid (red cubes), liquid (blue cubes) and gaseous (yellow cubes) and likewise the AQBG, they are emitted every round, Figure 5. The game was organized into 5 turns and 10 rounds in total, similar to the AQBG. The difference is that the targeted public is younger, typically from 12-18 years old, thus the questions are more general with the purpose to question the players about environmental issues on their daily life. For example, how many liters of water are consumed during one shower? Or how many kilograms of solid waste one single person produce per day? Another difference is the addition of the luck or setback cards, which will bring different situations on positive and negative environmental impacts to the city. Those cards will add an unpredictable character to the game and will expose the players to different situations.

Over the game the players will have the chance to find special items and recommendations that will be helpful in improving the environmental pollution. As the name suggests, the goal is to save the city from pollution. So far, the game has only been used among earlier stage undergraduate students, however, the idea is to use it in the fundamental and high schools in the city of Uberlandia in Brazil after the COVID-19 pandemic time. The free Portuguese version is available at https://peteas.weebly.com/jogos-educacionais.html. Unfortunately, the English version is not available yet. Let us know if you are interested about an English or Spanish version.

Figure 3 – AQBG gameplay in class.

Figure 4 – The board game contains 90 moving zones (small squares), 3 districts, the city center (1), industrial (2) and residential (3) and 10 rounds all together.

Figure 5 – Examples of carton tokens representing polluting sources (a), pollutant cubes (b) and carton markers to indicate the level of pollution in each sector(c).

References

Rodrigues, F. R. 2018. Air quality board game: elaboração e avaliação de estratégia pedagógica para ajudar na formação crítica e autônoma do engenheiro ambiental, 52, Federal University of Uberlandia, Uberlandia, Brazil, https://repositorio.ufu.br/handle/123456789/24391.

Rodrigues, F. R.; Carbone, F. J. and Carbone, S. Development and application of an air quality educational ludic activity in higher education classroom. Submitted to Journal of Environmental Education.

Rocha, C. 202. Salve a Cidade: Um jogo para disseminar os conhecimentos sobre questões ambientais no meio urbano, 80, Federal University of Uberlandia, Uberlandia, Brazil, https://repositorio.ufu.br/handle/123456789/31653.

Rocha, C. and Carbone, S. 2021. Salve a cidade: um jogo para disseminar os conhecimentos sobre questões ambientais no meio urbano. In: Educação, Ciências e Meio Ambiente. 1st Edition, Arco Editores, 49–67, https://f7f3ee10-6cec-4bfa-a3ac-eb10305f7e07.filesusr.com/ugd/4502fa_4700d32af9aa4b1880acd6d6fb0182d9.pdf.