The Design of an Ecosystem-Education Board Game Integrating Role-Play and Peer-Learning Mechanism and Its Evaluation of Learning Effectiveness and Flow

Abstract

The teaching activities in ecosystem-education are now more interactive in addition to the traditional classroom lectures, films, or field trips. In particular, game-based learning helps learners’ motivation and the opportunities for peer learning. Board games that do not need electricity and focus on players’ interactions are now widely used in many teaching practices. Based on cognitive learning theories and collaborative-learning theories, the present study designed My country, My Animal, a board game that integrated role plays and peer learning mechanism, to enhance learners’ understanding of the habitats of Formosan Black Bears and the related environmental issues. In this game, the learners played specific roles to rescue the bears by exploring forest geography, analyzing and managing the events in the cards, and collecting appropriate tool cards for peer discussions and solving the game tasks. Fifty-seven junior high school students in Taiwan participated in this empirical study, investigating the learners’ learning effectiveness and their flow state in the game. The results showed that the learners’ learning effectiveness related to the ecosystem knowledge of Formosan Black Bears was enhanced at a significant level as well as their high flow evaluated by the flow scale. These findings indicated that this board game helped improve motivation and learning efficacy to some extent. Moreover, no significant difference between genders was found in terms of their flow and learning effectiveness, which suggested that this game was suitable for both the male and female students. These findings were discussed with implications according to game-based learning and ecosystem-education issues.

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Author Information
Yi-Hui Lin, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Huei-Tse Hou, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

• Category: ACE ACSET AURS 2016, ACE2016, Poster Presentation
• Tag: Learner Experiences and Learner Diversity, Student Learning

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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