Research

INTRODUCTION

Agroecology is increasingly recognized as a sustainable and socially responsible alternative to modern industrial agriculture (Ong et al. 2024). As a holistic, integrative approach, agroecology simultaneously applies both social and ecological principles to the design and management of agricultural systems, elevating knowledge-intensive practices that support agrobiodiversity, promote synergies between plants, and reduce the need for external inputs (Wezel et al. 2020, Gliessman et al. 2022). In emphasizing equity, participatory processes, and cultural autonomy, agroecology also actively seeks to go beyond technical fixes and fundamentally challenge the underlying social, economic, and political systems that contribute to environmental degradation and social injustice in food systems, making it a transformative approach to working toward more just agrifood futures (Gliessman 2014, Mier y Terán Giménez Cacho et al. 2018, Anderson et al. 2021).

The last two decades have seen a global emergence of agroecological institutes and courses for undergraduates and graduate students across the social and natural sciences, highlighting the increasing momentum to engage students in higher education in this movement (Francis et al. 2011, Wezel et al. 2018, Ong et al. 2024). The effectiveness of these programs in leveraging education to catalyze food system transformation largely depends on the types of learning experiences they provide to students. A range of scholarship on agroecological education, for example, has highlighted the benefits of pedagogical approaches that center systems thinking, participation, knowledge sharing, and transdisciplinarity (Lieblein and Francis 2007, Code 2017, David and Bell 2018, Anderson et al. 2019). These process-based teaching practices enable what Horner et al. (2021) describe as “transformative learning,” in which educational experiences not only enhance content knowledge but also fundamentally shift students’ perspectives regarding their own identities and efficacy within the food system. In other words, transformative learning experiences help students develop a sense of agency in addressing food system issues (Horner et al. 2021).

Active, experiential learning that integrates theory with action is a core element of transformative agroecological education. Many agroecology programs achieve this by incorporating immersive field components into their curricula, such as on-farm research experiences or collaborative projects with community partners (Francis et al. 2011). At the same time, active learning can and should be brought into the classroom to effectively promote integrative and contextualized thinking among students (David and Bell 2018). One challenge of doing so, however, is that traditional lecture-based education tends to prioritize the communication of specialized, disciplinary knowledge, an approach that does not fully capture agroecological complexity and often fails to sufficiently acknowledge the social and political dimensions of the field (Lieblein and Francis 2007). In addition, communicating to students how they can actively engage in the tangible, site-specific processes essential for fostering agroecological transitions is particularly challenging because of the inherently abstract nature of many agroecological concepts when divorced from real-world applications (Code 2017). These challenges demand the development of innovative pedagogical tools that overcome disciplinary boundaries, prioritize peer-to-peer learning, and incorporate reflexive practice (Horner et al. 2021).

To bring experiential learning into the classroom as a means of supporting transformative agroecology, we developed a board game called “Companion: An Agroecological Adventure”^[1], which can be played by students studying agroecology and sustainable food systems as well as part of curricula in farm apprenticeship programs. A number of on-farm agroecology training programs have emerged over the years that use educational materials that are accessible and pedagogically transformative, such as the apprenticeship program at The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at the University of California Santa Cruz, and Soul Fire Farm’s Farmer Immersion Program.

The board game focuses on companion planting, understood as an agroecological practice rooted in the principle of biodiversity^[2] that maximizes the use of garden space while enhancing a variety of ecosystem services such as pest control, pollination, water retention, nutrient provisioning, and providing habitat for beneficial organisms (Wezel et al. 2020). Through participatory learning, the game provides an opportunity for students to explore 10 agroecological principles that emerge during play and that define agroecology: biodiversity, co-creation and sharing of knowledge, synergies, recycling, efficiency, resilience, human and social values, culture and food traditions, responsible governance and decision making, and circular and solidarity economy (Wezel et al. 2020). The board game also provides an avenue for educators to explore a range of topics in relation to food system transformation.

In this paper, we describe the development of Companion and explain how the game was designed to promote student engagement with assorted topics in agroecology while nurturing their capacity to think critically and holistically about agrifood systems and their place within them. We then present findings from a participatory study with a group of undergraduate agroecology students who play-tested a pilot version of the game. We use open-ended survey data and participant observation notes to examine Companion’s effectiveness as a pedagogical tool for facilitating agroecological thinking and communicating about how particular principles can be applied at small scales. We also assess the game’s capacity to positively impact student attitudes toward their own agency and efficacy in supporting broader food system transformation. Finally, we use these insights to explore the broader relevance of interdisciplinary, participatory games in both formal and non-formal agroecological education.

BACKGROUND

Board games as innovative pedagogical tools for agroecological transformation

In recent years, board games have surged in popularity as educational and experiential tools across various disciplines, including the health sciences, mathematics, agronomy, entomology, and broader environmental sciences (Speelman et al. 2019, Bayeck 2020, Campo and Dangles 2020, Robinson et al. 2021, Rodela and Speelman 2023). They offer a unique avenue for acquiring skills and knowledge, encouraging players to engage in sustainable resource management, empathy, problem-solving, communication, environmental literacy, and strategic thinking (Bayeck 2020). Moreover, board games facilitate diverse forms of learning, making educational settings more inclusive and fostering interactive classrooms (Campo and Dangles 2020).

Although recent research has recognized that board games are a promising pedagogical tool, they remain underutilized for communicating about complex sustainability issues (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2020). The effectiveness of board games as curriculum-aligned instructional resources stems in part from their materiality, which makes complicated topics more easily accessible and understandable by providing concrete visualizations of abstract concepts (Castranova and Knowles 2015). As a student-centered and participatory pedagogical approach, playing board games also provides students with agency, allowing them to make complex decisions, safely experiment with different approaches, and observe and reflect on the impact of their actions (Despeisse 2018). The critical and systemic thinking that the resulting sense of efficacy promotes both improves learning outcomes and helps build students’ capacities to apply gained knowledge to later activities or real-life situations (Douglas and Brauer 2021). Board games have been successfully utilized as a means of communicating about environmental topics such as evolution (Muell et al. 2020), urban planning (King and Cazessus 2014, Robinson et al. 2021), and climate change (Castranova and Knowles 2015, Wu and Lee 2015, Chappin et al. 2017) in both formal and informal settings.

Various characteristics of board games make them an ideal tool for teaching about sustainable food systems and agroecology specifically. Scholarship on agroecological pedagogy has acknowledged that the process by which students engage with course content matters just as much as the material that is covered (Østergaard et al. 2010, David and Bell 2018). As an inherently interactive method of learning that immerses students in a simulated environment, playing board games can emulate the type of experiential learning that has been widely acknowledged as critical for effective agroecological education (Francis et al. 2011). Because themed board games tend to represent environmental complexity in an accessible way, they can also be used to synthesize concepts from several different subject areas, making them particularly useful tools for interdisciplinary learning and communication (Eisenack 2013). This approach can facilitate teaching about how different agroecological principles, both social and biological, interact and reinforce one another in a particular scenario. Furthermore, the strategic thinking required to play many board games teaches students how to make effective choices in the future (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2020), which could be helpful in developing their decision-making skills related to how to practically apply agroecological principles to new situations.

The sociality of game play can also promote the development of various other “soft skills” that are essential for supporting agroecological thinking, such as patience, communication, teamwork, and intercultural competence (Bellotti et al. 2013, Bayeck 2020). For example, although many games are competitive, ongoing cooperation is required to fully understand the game state and maintain rules of play (Rogerson et al. 2018). This aspect of playing board games could thus be particularly helpful for overcoming the individualistic ideals that characterize much lecture-based sustainable food systems education, particularly in the United States (David and Bell 2018).

The potential of games for facilitating agroecological education has already been demonstrated in various contexts. Complex interactive online simulation games designed specifically for use in university-level agroecology programs, such as “SEGAE” (Jouan et al. 2020) and “Agrodiversity” (Speelman and Garcia-Barrios 2010), have been shown to improve students’ learning outcomes, particularly their understanding of issues related to fertility management and interactions among species in an agroecosystem. Similar simulations also exist specifically for producer education purposes; for example, Farrie et al. (2015) developed a game called “Rangeland Rummy” to promote discussion and knowledge exchange among livestock farmers about best practices for addressing contextual challenges like weather variability. Similarly, the “Azteca Chess” board game has been used to communicate complex ecological interactions and biological pest control among agroecological farmers in Latin America (Garcia-Barrios et al. 2016). By gamifying the implementation of agroecological practices, these tools have helped agricultural professionals develop their adaptive capacities and gain a more integrative understanding of on-farm sustainability.

We developed Companion: An Agroecological Adventure to provide a highly accessible option for game-based learning that could appeal to a broader audience than the games described above, ranging from casual players with little experience in the field to upper-level students in agroecology programs and long-time practitioners. Companion differs from existing agroecology games in that it explores how core principles can be applied at hyper-local scales, such as that of a community garden, highlighting players’ agency in taking actions that support transformative agroecology close to home.

METHODS

Description of the board game

Overview and development process

Companion: An Agroecological Adventure is a moderately complex, spatial reasoning board game developed by the authors in which players arrange crops in small, raised beds in a community garden based on the principles of companion planting. The game can be played by individual players or by small teams of 2–3 people competing against each other. The competitive team mode was playtested for this study, as research has shown that friendly competition promotes more thorough engagement with the game material as players are motivated to apply learned concepts more effectively than their opponents (Burguillo 2010). However, playing the competitive version of the game successfully still requires a degree of intergroup cooperation. A non-competitive, fully co-operative version of the game is also available for educators to use to emphasize cooperation or as an activity in polyculture garden planning.

The overall objective when playing Companion is to cultivate a thriving garden ecosystem by applying agroecological principles to its design and upkeep. Throughout the game, players make decisions about which plants to select from a shared market, and where to place the chosen plants in their gardens to maximize beneficial interactions, such as pest deterrence and improved soil fertility. Points can be scored in many different ways, a feature that intends to encourage players to think critically about trade-offs and synergies as well as the different metrics of measuring success in sustainable agroecosystems.

Although Companion’s target audience is not exclusively students, the game was designed with use in both formal and informal education settings in mind. An early version of the game was originally developed and piloted by two of the co-authors (Das and Capito) as a component of an extension workshop about companion planting directed at amateur gardeners. During this initial workshop, we provided a background on the companion planting concept and then led participants through an earlier version of the game that involved individually planting a garden based on ideal plant pairings. Following the game’s positive reception in this context, it was expanded and modified based on a review of literature on educational board game design and play-tester feedback, with major changes including the introduction of competition, the development of a more structured set of rules, and the inclusion of unique objective, challenge, and event cards. The information about plant characteristics and companion planting that informed the game’s design was obtained from educational materials published on various university cooperative extension websites.

Playing the game

Companion is played over 10 rounds, during which players work toward achieving a set of general gardening goals that illustrate different elements of a sustainable production system (see Appendix 1 for full rulebook). For example, one of the general goals is to design a plot that contains five or more pollinator-friendly plants that exemplify the benefits of garden diversity. The generalized goals of the game include managing your garden for diversity by having a plot containing five or more pollinator-friendly plants, supporting resilience by having ground cover crops in your garden, building synergies by having a plant be protected from an insect pest because of a companion planting, and supporting human and social values by trading three or more cards with fellow players during the game. Each player or team also has an individual objective card (Fig. 1) that provides a unique scoring condition and further guides their decision making regarding which crops to plant. Many of these objectives highlight how sociocultural preferences shape food systems and how the crops that form the basis of culturally appropriate diets can also complement each other nutritionally and ecologically.

Each round, players first choose two crops to add to their “seed storage” (hand of cards) from a “market” of 10 face-up plant cards, which are replenished from the larger plant card deck at the end of each player’s or team’s turn. Forty different plant cards, featuring a mix of ornamental plants, used for decorative and ceremonial purposes, and edible crops, are available to choose from in total. All plants in the deck are common home garden cultivars in the Northeastern United States, where the game was developed. Each card features a stylized drawing of the plant, its common and scientific names, a set of symbols that depict its classification (i.e., brassica, nightshade, or leafy green), lists of its ideal and non-ideal companions, and information about the pests it deters and/or is susceptible to (Fig. 2). Each card also includes a short blurb, with information about the plant’s preferred cultivation conditions and why the ideal companion pairings listed on the card are beneficial. At any time during a player’s turn, they may trade plant cards from their seed storage with other players. Plant cards can be traded as many times as desired, as long as both parties agree to the exchange.

After drawing their cards, players “plant” up to two crops from their hands by shading and labeling the appropriate number of grid squares on the garden beds on their game boards (Fig. 3). Each bed contains 40 grid spaces, with each representing 1 square foot of soil. Players make decisions about where to place their crops based on the information provided on the plant card, including ideal/non-ideal companions and pest susceptibilities. Because space is limited, players must make strategic decisions about how to maximize beneficial interactions within the confines of their garden beds, applying a range of agroecological principles including diversification and synergies.

After planting their crops, each player or team during their turn rolls a game die and completes the action listed on the face that it lands on. Two of the listed actions on the die, “draw an extra plant card” and “plant an extra crop,” each provide players with a small advantage, provided that they utilize their bonus actions strategically. The other potential outcomes of the die roll require players to draw “life” or “challenge” cards, (both listed twice on the die), which represent chance events that might occur during a gardening season and affect the plot’s management and growth. Each of these cards includes a description of the event, followed by a description of how the card will affect in-game actions and/or scores. Depending on the card, either the player who drew it or all players at the table may be affected. Cards in the “challenge” deck describe a variety of social and ecological shocks that may impact gardeners, including pest attacks, seed shortages, and extreme weather events (Fig. 4a). The inclusion of this feature intends to reiterate the game’s central theme of companion planting for agricultural sustainability and to promote adaptive thinking and creative solving among players. “Life” cards describe a variety of beneficial events that may provide players with a gardening advantage (Fig. 4b). The wide range of in-game activities and approaches that life cards reward is intended to demonstrate that gardening success is multifaceted, encompassing many factors beyond crop yield, and can be achieved through the application of a wide variety of agroecological principles, including those centered around the social dimensions of food system sustainability. Some life cards allow players to add to their seed storage or plant extra crops, while others generate points based on what players have already planted. Other cards in this deck emphasize how community building can help your own garden thrive, allowing players to gain points or other benefits by choosing to help other gardeners.

Scoring

Players keep track of the points they gain or lose from life and challenge cards using a score track printed along the outside of their game boards. At the end of the game, players score additional points based on the final arrangement of crops in their garden beds. Each crop scores a “base” number of points, printed on the plant card itself (between 1-5 points). The point value of each crop goes up if planted next to ideal companions, or down if non-ideal companions are planted next to each other. A point is also lost per “lonely” plant (completely separated from other crops). Finally, players are awarded additional points for successfully meeting general or personal objectives. Although objective and companion planting points are officially awarded after the game’s ten rounds are completed, players may at any time assess their own board, as well as the boards of their opponents, in order to calculate current scores and standings.

Data collection

Companion was playtested in April 2023 with a group of approximately 50 undergraduate students in an introductory agroecology course at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York in the Northeastern United States. The class is a required core course within the university’s Food Studies program, which takes a multi-level, holistic approach to examining the food system and prepares students for careers in diverse fields, including the non-profit sector, public policy, and communications. Students from other programs may also choose to take the course as an elective.

The goals of the playtest were to observe the effectiveness of the game as a general teaching tool, to validate whether it successfully reiterated various agroecological principles and their interactive effects, and to solicit feedback on potential areas for improvement from participants who had moderate prior knowledge of the game’s subject matter. The session took place at the end of the semester, so all students had a shared level of understanding of agroecology prior to playing.

We, the authors, administered the playtest and began by giving a short presentation that introduced the game to the students and provided an overview of its structure, objectives, and rules. Students were then randomly divided into 4 groups of about 10–12 students each, then further subdivided themselves into teams of 2–3. Students then played a “walk-through” round of the game as the instructors went through each step of a turn to ensure consistent understanding of the rules. After this tutorial round, students played the game autonomously for 45 minutes. Although we were available to answer questions during gameplay, students were encouraged to attempt to resolve questions by consulting with their classmates before requesting external clarification, which promoted intragroup collaboration and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. We observed the students closely during this free play time, focusing on player engagement, team dynamics, and any points of confusion that arose.

After students had the opportunity to play through 4–5 rounds of the game (fewer than suggested because of time restraints and larger group size) the instructors walked individual groups through the end-of-game scoring process. Students were then given a few minutes to reflect in their small groups about how the strategies they utilized had affected the game’s outcomes. Instructors prompted each team to discuss what worked in their approaches and what they would do differently if they were to play the game again.

The playtesting session ended with a short in-class debriefing session facilitated by the instructors that focused on students’ gaming experiences and learning outcomes, including sharing reflections on the effectiveness of different strategies with the full class. We also solicited feedback about what students enjoyed most about the game, their perspectives on its effectiveness as a teaching tool, and any potential areas for improvement.

After class, students were also asked to complete a short online survey about their experience and reflections. The survey included questions about what students perceived to be the game’s strengths and weaknesses, how playing the game influenced students’ learning, and what agroecological principles the students identified as key aspects of gameplay. These questions allowed students to further critically reflect on their experiences as well as share feedback anonymously. Of the approximately 50 students who took part in the session, 33 responded to the survey.

Data analysis

We used directed content analysis to analyze students’ in-class comments about the game, their responses to the open-ended survey questions, and our notes from conducting participant observation during the playtesting session. Directed content analysis involves coding data into predetermined categories derived from the literature while simultaneously allowing new themes to inductively emerge (Assarroudi et al. 2018). Using this approach, we identified three overarching themes that students emphasized in their reflections: the general usefulness of game-based learning as an educational approach, Companion’s perceived efficacy in facilitating learning specifically about agroecology and sustainable garden management, and potential limitations of the game or perceived areas for improvement. Under each of these overarching themes, we grouped together a set of sub-themes, each of which captured a different aspect of the larger topic at hand (see Appendix 2 for list of sub-themes, descriptions, and examples from survey data). In our interpretation of each sub-theme, we placed a particularly strong analytical focus on examining how students’ comments reflected the types of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that have been identified as necessary for effectively addressing complex challenges in the food system. We also assessed how often different agroecological principles and practices were organically mentioned in survey responses in order to get a better understanding of which concepts students felt the game most successfully communicated.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

We present results that illustrate how students’ experiences and discussions while playing Companion provide opportunities for transformative agroecological learning, reflecting strategic, contextual, systems-based thinking, and demonstrate a nuanced understanding of specific agroecological principles (Table 1). We explore how these outcomes help address the “learning-doing gap” that characterizes lecture-based and theory dominant approaches to agroecological education (Code 2017), making games a useful component of more action-oriented pedagogies that can help build important competencies for supporting food system transformation among a broad range of students and professionals. Finally, we discuss strategies for maximizing the benefits of game-based learning, along with a few potential limitations of this approach.

Companion as an innovative tool for teaching and practicing transformative agroecology

The results of our study show that incorporating themed games like Companion into food studies and agroecology curricula can bring the spirit of active, experiential learning into the classroom, an approach that has been described as vitally important for effective sustainable food systems education (David and Bell 2018). Research on agroecological pedagogy has shown that students are more highly motivated and engaged when they are given opportunities to put previous knowledge and experiences to use (Lieblein and Francis 2007). In their survey responses, students consistently reported that playing Companion provided such an opportunity to put content into context by simulating a field experience within the confines of the classroom. Students particularly appreciated Companion’s integrative representation of an agroecosystem, describing the diversity of available actions, scoring pathways, and cards as key factors that made the game engaging and helped students “visualize how [agroecological] interactions and principles actually take place.” Several students emphasized that they found the hands-on nature of the game especially helpful in this regard because the course’s format did not allow for many opportunities for active engagement with the subject matter, such as visiting farms. For example, one student noted:

[Playing Companion] could help bring a “field” component to a class where sessions are too short to actually get outside. We can’t get into the garden during class, but an activity like this shows how principles would be applied to an actual farming situation.

By allowing students to apply agroecological principles to a “real-world” scenario, this approach merged theory with practice, encouraging students to connect ideas and engage in active problem solving to create a sustainable garden, rather than simply memorizing facts out of context.

This experience, some students emphasized, helped reiterate specific agroecological concepts and principles that they had previously learned about in a manner that they felt would make the content “more likely to stick with them” and “easier to connect to the real world.” For example, one student expressed the perspective that “this kind of teaching tool is a more effective way to communicate the specific properties of certain plants and disturbance events than slideshow lectures.” Survey responses suggest that stronger comprehension of the principles of agricultural diversification and synergies was a particularly prevalent learning outcome, with one student, for example, stating that playing the game made them realize companion planting is “not just about complementary nutrients in the soil” and that there are “more elements to it than that.” Students felt that these concepts were well illustrated through “the different plant cards and how they interacted and relied on one another,” with the game’s mechanisms encouraging them to “[make] gardening choices based on having a diverse array of plant species that work together to reduce reliance on chemicals.” Other students mentioned that the game’s depiction of non-ideal companions effectively “show[ed] how some plants do not work well with others,” helping them understand that more biodiversity is not always inherently good because negative interactions can occur between specific plants. Overall, students’ consistent recognition “that [players] actually had to consider all factors in creating a garden” demonstrates the game’s potential for fostering contextual thinking and a deeper understanding of agroecosystem complexity.

Many students also recognized various social principles of agroecology that the game highlighted through life and objective cards, such as responsible governance and human and social values. For example, one student drew attention to the “Compost Sharing” card (Fig. 2) in their survey response, describing the way they felt it drew attention to concepts of connectivity and fairness within the food system. During the post-game debrief, another student mentioned that they liked that the game demonstrated how these broad social principles, which often seem abstract when presented in lecture format, can be tangibly applied at hyper-local scales such as a community garden to simultaneously achieve positive social and ecological outcomes.

Despite the competitive nature of the game, playing effectively also required students to practice utilizing various interpersonal skills that are not always central in lecture-based education, such as teamwork, verbal communication, active listening, negotiation, and patience. The task of planting a new crop each turn, for example, prompted respectful discussions about viable strategies as students working together debated what their next move ought to be. Because this process sometimes required compromise, students were encouraged to exercise humility and practice appreciating the value of alternative perspectives. Trading cards also required inter-team cooperation, which prompted students to consider how collaboration can result in improved outcomes for multiple stakeholders. This element of gameplay also simulated acts of community seed saving and sharing, which are key characteristics of socioeconomically sustainable agricultural systems (Andersen et al. 2019). Negotiating also keeps the game engaging for students by increasing interactivity and encouraging players to set their own terms (Rogerson et al. 2018). Many students reported appreciating this inherently social nature of gameplay, with one writing in their survey response that they felt “interacting with peers allows for better comprehension of topics and connections inside the classroom.” During the playtesting session, we also observed students working together to understand the game’s rules as well as sharing relevant real-world local knowledge about gardening amongst themselves. Many students pointed out that the collaborative process of “actively learning and working with others” exemplified the agroecological principle of co-creation and sharing of knowledge. In addition to deepening content knowledge, developing and practicing these interpersonal skills can help students succeed when working in future inter- and transdisciplinary contexts (David and Bell 2018).

In addition to the learning opportunities offered by the agroecological themes of the board game, we identified three aspects of game mechanics, i.e., how the rules and actions that define how the game is played, that allow students to engage in deeper learning. First, continuous score keeping throughout the game allows players to practice self-evaluation, which is important for autonomous learning using games, as it allows students to monitor how different decisions impact in-game success (Adipat et al. 2021). Second, although losing points as a result of challenge cards may be frustrating for players, it also encourages them to learn from failures and persevere in achieving their objectives despite roadblocks. This type of experience, which has been described as “productive negativity,” plays an important role in helping players identify misconceptions and expand their knowledge horizons (Gauthier and Jenkinson 2018). For example, because the negative impacts of some challenge card events can be mitigated by how players decide to arrange crops in their garden bed (i.e., planting a crop susceptible to a certain pest next to a crop that deters that pest), players who lose part of their harvest because of non-ideal plant arrangements are able to learn and adjust their strategies in future rounds or game sessions to improve their garden’s resilience. Third, receiving intermittent rewards through Life Cards keeps gameplay engaging and counteracts the frustrations or negativity that players may feel from challenges in gameplay. Additionally, introducing uncertainty about future aspects of gameplay by incorporating such elements of chance has been shown to create a sense of suspense that enhances student motivation and engagement (Wang and Tahir 2020). Effectively dealing with unpredictability has also been identified as a key competency for future agroecologists to develop (Francis et al. 2011).

Collectively, these different aspects of gameplay facilitated what Horner et al. (2021) describe as “transformative learning” by helping to shift students’ frames of reference regarding what sustainable agriculture can and should look like. For example, many students explicitly acknowledged having a greater appreciation of the importance of social dimensions of agroecology, such as knowledge sharing and maintaining culture and food traditions, after playing the game, demonstrating an expanded understanding of the field’s transdisciplinarity. Survey responses and in-class observation also suggest that playing Companion promoted a stronger understanding of agroecology as something that is participatory and action-oriented, with many students expressing a newfound recognition of their own agency and self-efficacy in community food systems. One student who had little prior experience with growing food wrote the following:

I feel as though [the game] would be really helpful to me this summer when I can go out to my own garden at home and oversee what my parents have planted. I’ll know about each crop, and if I wanted to add to the garden, I’d know which plants I could add.

Several others expressed during in-class discussions that playing the game had inspired them to join or volunteer at a community garden so they could put what they had just learned into practice. This increased recognition of oneself as being or having the ability to be an active participant in the food system has been recognized as an important first step toward catalyzing collective action that supports agrifood system reform and transformation (Lieblein and Francis 2007). Thus, although game-based learning is not a replacement for hands-on farming or other community-based experiences, it can encourage transformative ways of thinking that students apply to future practice.

Indeed, one way in which transformative learning through play could directly benefit agroecology students is by making their simultaneous or future field experiences more meaningful. For example, one student specifically drew attention to the fact that “introducing a new game to the class allows students to feel more comfortable in making errors and asking questions,” which helps clarify misconceptions in a productive way. In other words, playing games allows students to make mistakes and challenge previously held assumptions in low-stakes scenarios, which lets them test alternative approaches without experiencing significant negative consequences. Students who have had an opportunity to exercise agency and experience challenges within the safe confines of a game before encountering similar issues in the real world may benefit from their learned insights and feel empowered to explore a wider variety of approaches in the field (Lieblen and Francis 2007). A notable benefit of using games to supplement field-based learning in this way is that students can continue learning through repeat plays outside the classroom without the need for further instructional time, which is often limited in highly interdisciplinary courses that cover a broad range of topics. This also makes Companion and similar games ideal tools to utilize in other agricultural education contexts where the target audience consists mainly of practitioners, such as extension workshops or gardening programs.

Game-based learning beyond the agroecology classroom

Learning about agroecology through play can be useful for students pursuing production-oriented or food systems related careers, both in traditional contexts and non-traditional settings, such as beginner farmer programs. However, we do not discard the possibility for playing Companion outside of a food and agriculture-related context. For example, survey responses demonstrate that playing Companion made local agricultural contexts more salient and understandable for students who were previously unfamiliar with them, which can catalyze broader participation in these spaces in the future. One student, for example, mentioned that “Playing this game helps inform you on what's happening in your background and makes you want to get involved.” This makes games like Companion valuable tools that can be utilized in introductory level or general education courses (i.e. general ecology and environmental science.).

Further, Companion’s simplicity may appeal to a much broader, non-academic audience. Many students noted the game’s accessibility, with one writing that its mechanics “made agroecology fun and accessible for a beginner.” The game’s attractive aesthetics, materiality, sociality, and accessible representation of a complex topic are also key characteristics of successful popular science board games (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2020). As students noted the practical applicability of what they learned through gameplay, one of Companion’s strengths is its capacity to bridge the “simulation gap” between in-game experiences and their real-world application (Bogost 2010). Unlike many environmentally themed games where players act as empowered actors and decision makers on major issues, Companion focuses on small-scale agroecosystems that players could realistically engage with, making learning outcomes more relevant and actionable.

By enlarging the educational community for agroecology, this broader reach can have meaningful impacts on food system reform. Board games can generate public awareness and positive action (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2022), as well as promote stronger positive attitudes toward sustainability (Chappin et al. 2017). Together, games themed around agroecology can encourage players to experience complexities, confront commonly accepted assumptions, and envision alternative futures.

Specific strategies for facilitating transformative learning through games

Our findings show that certain practices common in game-based learning can maximize this approach’s contributions to innovative and radical agroecological pedagogy in particular. The first of these practices is post-game debriefing, which is an essential practice that helps players organize their thoughts and meaningfully process their in-game experiences. As we confirmed while observing the playtesting session, providing time for small group discussions after scoring had concluded encouraged students to critically reflect on their strategies and think about how what they learned could be applied outside of the classroom. Because people often learn different things from the same activities (Schell 2008), both as a result of varying in-game experiences and personal attitudes, values, and beliefs (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2017), the process of debriefing can itself support co-creation of knowledge and help foster interdisciplinarity. Peer sharing can also help to clarify any misconceptions that emerged during gameplay, as we observed in students’ post-scoring discussions. For example, when one student in a group conflated the benefits of ground cover and cover crops in gardening, their classmate jumped in to respectfully explain the difference between the two. In the context of this playtest, post-game debriefing also allowed for constructive criticism of the game’s shortcomings or discrepancies with students’ prior experiences, which offers educational benefits in and of itself. For example, because games are necessarily simplifications of complex realities, encouraging students to reflect on how gameplay differs from a real-world scenario can motivate further critical thinking about sustainable agroecosystems and one’s role within them. This type of reflection and peer-to-peer learning is a crucial component of the transformative learning process described throughout this paper (Horner et al. 2021).

A second strategy for facilitating transformative learning using games is to extend student engagement with the game material. During the playtest, we observed that students became more comfortable with the game’s rules as the session progressed and were thus able to make more strategic decisions in later rounds. Multiple playthroughs would reinforce these benefits while also allowing players to learn from past experiences and become more familiar with the cards in the deck. Over time, this would lead to a stronger understanding among players of how different plant arrangements shape their ability to respond to challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Playing Companion multiple times throughout the semester and having students reflect on their changing strategies and scores could thus provide important insights into the impacts of strengthening adaptive capacity on agroecosystem resilience to social and ecological shocks. Instructors could also consider incorporating a “legacy” element to games they utilize in their curricula, such that the choices that players make during each playthrough permanently affect the parameters of future games. For example, planting combinations of crops that help build soil health in one game could make all plants worth more points in the future because of yield increases associated with greater fertility. Modifying agroecology games to include this type of mechanic could help reinforce learning outcomes related to the time dimension of improving food system sustainability and resilience.

Limitations of and future directions for game-based agroecological learning

Although the results of our study suggest that incorporating board games into sustainable food systems curricula can support transformative learning, it is important to consider the following limitations and recommendations. First, an inherent limitation of board games as a pedagogical tool is that they must simplify complex concepts to increase accessibility. As such, Companion makes generalizations about ecosystem functions that do not always capture real-world agroecosystem complexity (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2020). For Companion and similar games, encouraging students to critically reflect on how real-world complexity could have altered agroecosystem interactions could help avoid misconceptions. One option is to have students modify the base game to increase its scientific accuracy and educational value, a creative process with great learning potential (Muell et al. 2020).

Second, place-based practices and social principles are difficult to express in the micro-scale agroecosystem of the game. This made it challenging for some social dimensions of agroecology to come through in gameplay, such as “solidarity economy,” and to fully address the relevance of context-dependency in agroecology. To address the former, the game could be modified to include a cooperative play mode in which players must play collectively on a larger shared garden bed, working together to collaboratively manage resources, maximize beneficial interactions, and address a known set of gardening challenges. To address the latter, we plan to collaborate with regional partners to develop locally adapted plant cards for Companion.

Finally, determining whether game-based learning helps students achieve specific learning outcomes can be complicated (Bellotti et al. 2013). In-game success does not always reflect actual learning (Fjællingsdal and Klöckner 2022); therefore, including external assessments can help instructors better understand how a game impacts students’ learning. We addressed this issue by evaluating learning outcomes indirectly, relying on students’ open-ended, subjective reflections about how and what they learned as a measure of Companion’s success in teaching agroecological principles. This approach provided a nuanced assessment, showing the game effectively promoted learning about garden biodiversity, synergies, and input reduction. However, because self-reported learning is difficult to validate (Suskie 2018), we recommend pairing reflective assessments with more systematic evaluations, such as pre- and post-activity comparisons (Speelman and Garcia Barrios 2010, Garcia-Barrios et al. 2017).

CONCLUSION

In this study, we examined how playing a board game themed around companion planting shaped the learning experiences of a group of students enrolled in an interdisciplinary food studies program. Our results demonstrate that teaching agroecology through play can help introduce real world context to lecture-based education, making this pedagogical approach an effective component of an action-oriented learning landscape. In particular, playing Companion: An Agroecological Adventure both fostered a stronger understanding of how to apply specific agroecological principles such as diversification in a particular context and encouraged holistic thinking about food systems among students who tested the game for this study. Although games like Companion are by no means perfect simulators of the social-ecological complexity of sustainable agroecosystems, the participatory and experiential learning that they foster makes them a particularly useful tool for nurturing important competencies such as adaptive, collaborative, and systems-based thinking that students can then apply to future practice.

The ultimate goal of radical and innovative agroecological pedagogies is to overcome disciplinary boundaries, promote contextualized solutions, and shift students’ frames of reference regarding what sustainable agriculture can and should look like. By supporting these outcomes, integrating agroecology-themed games into sustainable food systems curricula can be one catalyst for fostering the transformative learning that is more crucial than ever for supporting locally relevant and inclusive agroecological transition processes. Promoting critical reflection and encouraging student-driven innovation can further increase the educational value of these tools, contributing to a more holistic approach to sustainable food systems education.

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^[1] A trial version of this game is available for free download at the following website: https://www.livingagroecology.com/course-materials
^[2] Biodiversity as a fundamental principle in agroecology emphasizes the enhancement and preservation of biodiversity across species, functional traits, and genetic resources as crucial for sustaining agroecosystems. This principle aims to maintain a diverse array of organisms, ensuring the resilience and productivity of agricultural landscapes at various scales, from individual fields to entire farms and landscapes, both presently and in the future (Wezel et al. 2020).

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