“REEF SURVIVOR” – A NEW BOARD GAME DESIGNED TO TEACH COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ABOUT REEF ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND EXTINCTION

Geoscience educational games and game-based education have recently been increasing in popularity. Games are excellent instructional tools as they promote learning through play and encourage students to engage with the topical material as well as discuss their strategies and findings with other students; these benefits are especially important in entry level college classes. Here we describe a new board game, “Reef Survivor”, and its use as a learning tool in undergraduate classes. The educational objective is to teach the player about ecology, evolution, and environmental perturbations, while the gameplay objective is to build a healthy, resilient reef ecosystem. Through collaborative and competitive gameplay, students learn about the mechanics of evolution—mutation, migration, and natural selection— as well as reef ecology and the mechanisms by which reefs can survive natural disasters. The game blends informed decision making and chance to encourage students to become familiar with the material, reinforce concepts, and model complicated Earth systems and evolutionary processes. The game allows students to choose their base bathymetry and the organisms that will be part of their reef community, reinforcing student knowledge of bathymetry and community ecology. Conversely, chance influences the mutations their reef builders gain (emphasizing the randomness of genetic mutation in a population) as well as the environmental disasters the students encounter (teaching students about environmental perturbations as well as how natural selection acts on a population). The game was incorporated in undergraduate classroom activities in 15 colleges and universities across the United States. Survey results show that students were overwhelmingly positive about the game, with considerable educational gains in learning objectives following gameplay. In addition, the games led to other benefits for the students, such as collaboration, teambuilding, and curiosity about conservation. “Reef Survivor” is also being adapted for use in US high schools as well as Jamaican communities (both adult community members and primary school students).