David Anderson & Amber Wales
This term we supported Amber Wales to collect data for her undergraduate dissertation “Using euro-style board games to build 21st Century employability skills & close the graduate skills gap”.
Amber ran a session with our students to play the co-operative board game Pandemic. In this game players need to work collaboratively to prevent the spread of multiple diseases across the globe. There are multiple ways of losing the game and only one way to win – find the cure for each of the diseases. To win requires teams to plan ahead, communicate clearly with each other and a bit of luck.
Students really enjoyed the challenge of playing Pandemic and by theend of the session were invested in trying to beat the game. Students evaluated themselves against the World Economic Forum 21st Century SKills and highlighted that they most used active learning, complex problem solving, critical thinking & analyis, and leaderhsip & social influence whilst playing the game.
What this experience highlighted was that euro-style board games are not common place, only one student had heard of Pandemic and few had heard of other euro games, such as Catan, Herd Mentality, or Ticket to Ride. These kind of games are still novel to students and present opportuinties for skills development which are fun and engaging. With such a wide variety of mechanics games provide the opportunity for students to develop a wide range of softskills.