Games for education of human-environment interactions
Feature-in-Progress
Guest Editors: Michael Cox, Marci Decaro, Tomas Koontz, Praneeta Mudliar
Interactive games have emerged as powerful tools for teaching about social-ecological systems and human-environment interactions. Public good and common-pool resource games as well as serious games offer opportunities to demonstrate concepts such as collective action, free-riding, cooperation, and governance while actively engaging students in the learning process. However, the lessons learned from applications of these approaches are not often formally shared and compared, leading to a lack of collective learning about how best to use games for social-ecological education. One way to address this gap is to explore a diversity of game-based approaches to social-ecological education and compare them.
This special feature welcomes comparative empirical studies, theoretical frameworks, and particularly case studies that examine how classroom games can enhance student learning outcomes. We are particularly interested in research that investigates innovative adaptations of classic public good games, the integration of technology with game implementation, and comparative analyses of learning outcomes between traditional teaching methods and game-based approaches. Contributors are encouraged to address how these games can be effectively scaled across different class sizes, adapted for online learning environments, and modified to address diverse learning objectives and topics.
Key themes to be explored include: the role of games in developing students' understanding of social dilemmas; best practices for implementing games in various classroom settings; methods for assessing learning outcomes; and the potential of games to foster critical thinking about public policy and social cooperation. We also welcome papers that examine how these games can be used to teach broader concepts such as sustainability, resource management, and civic engagement. Manuscripts should present original research, be empirically grounded where appropriate, and offer clear implications for educational practice. We encourage submissions from diverse disciplinary perspectives, including economics, education, psychology, environmental sciences, political science, natural resources, and related fields.
