Board Games Help Your Educational Career

Pre-college, I spent my elementary years wandering around Candy Land, my junior high years journeying through The Game of Life, and my high school years collecting green apples in Apples to Apples. During my youth, board games were a fun family activity to pass the time. When college hit, a friend dragged me to a board game night. Over the next four years, I was introduced to dozens of new games.

The more time I spent playing these off-the-beaten track games, the more I began to realize that some of the games I regularly played helped me build skills to aid my educational career. Deborah Henderson, a professor and the director of Ohio University’s School of Nursing, confirms my realization that certain board games can be utilized as a method to encourage more effective learning. “Gaming,” Henderson explains in Designing An Educational Game for the Fun of Learning “can be used to reinforce facts, acquire knowledge and skills, practice problem–solving and decision making, and promote team building.”

How would you prefer to learn new knowledge and hone new skills?

If you had the ability to trade dry lectures, long book passages, and painful group projects for hours of playing a board game, would you? If games as a learning experience is the path you wish to take, here are three games that combine a fun experience with a valuable learning experience.

 

The Resistance: Avalon = Emotional Intelligence

Intrigue and bluffing games help individuals hone their emotional intelligence (EI). EI is an individual’s ability to control their non-verbal and verbal reactions, read other individuals emotions, and recognize their own emotions. What does emotional intelligence have to do with education? Well, a high EI will help you navigate through the interpersonal aspect of group projects. Unburdened by misunderstandings, you can then put the entirety of your time into learning from each other.

The Resistance: Avalon is an Arthurian themed bluffing game released by Indie Board and Card Games. Before the game starts players are given hidden role cards that identify them as either minions of Mordred or loyal followers of King Arthur. Game play goes like this: the leader nominates the group who will set of on the epic quest, all players choose to openly reject or accept the nominations, the group that departs on the quest secretly vote to either fail or succeed at the quest. One failure is enough to fail the mission, and three failed quests is enough for the evil minions to win the game.

In order to win the game, the followers of Arthur must utilize their current EI skills to identify signs that other players might be lying (a feature of high EI) about whether they are on the side of good. The inability to identify the evil minions will lead to quick and brutal loss for the followers of Arthur. The evil Minions must be able to keep a straight face and unassuming body language while pretending to be a follower of Arthur. Failure to do so, will result in your secret evil identity being revealed. Don’t worry if you can’t seem to outwit your opponents. Repeated exposure to the game, as well as, asking some of the more skilled at the game some of their own tactics, will lead to eventual success.

 

Panic Station = Work Under Stress

School can be stressful. Tests, projects, essays, and speeches can all cause mind-freezing, scatterbrained stress. The bad news is that this educational stress will never disappear. You will always need to juggle deadlines, take tests, and tackle skills you don’t feel equipped to handle. The good news is that you can learn how to cope with stress, so it doesn’t become debilitating.

Panic Station is one of the most stressful games I’ve played. In the game, players are sent to a base that has been infected by alien life forms. As you wander the base, one of the players is secretly infected by the alien parasite. That unlucky player must then come up with a strategy to infect every other player without revealing they are the host.

As the host, the player learns how to push aside their stress, mask the fact they are stressed, and figure out how to implement a plan. Repeated exposure to the game can aid the player in transferring the stress management skills to their educational career.

 

Legendary = Team Work

Team projects can be a very effective learning strategy. Students who learn through co-operative learning “exhibit higher scores, better understanding […], and better analytical thinking skills.” In order to get the full benefit of the project, individuals must be able to circumvent the hurdles that many students face while completing the projects. This is how a lot of my team projects in school usually went: long arguments about how to implement the project, at least one team mate that doesn’t pull their weight, and one team mate who either chooses or is forced to do the majority of the work.

A lot of the problems could be avoided if at least a few of the team members have a lot of experience performing cooperative activities. Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game is a great way to become experienced at navigating the complexities of team projects.

In the game, each player controls a superhero team. The teams must band together in order to face off against minor villains, an evil mastermind, and a nefarious plot twist. The ability to strategize with each other, for each team member to pull his or her weight and make the right decision is imperative to meet the game’s win condition (beating the mastermind three times). Team members not pulling their weight or putting their own desires before the good of the team could lead to a quick and brutal loss.

 

It’s time to learn – Get Gaming!

Not all knowledge needs to be obtained through boring lectures and readings. Board games can be a fun, hand-on strategy to build the skills necessary to excel in junior high, high school, or college. Many different games teach a variety of skills, but Avalon, Panic Station, and Legendary are great games to get you started.

Guest Post by Samantha Stauf
Samantha Stauf spends her days working in marketing, so she spends all of her money on board games. Hopefully one day she’ll have enough time to play them all.

You can find her on Twitter at @samanthastauf