Food Fight: Teaching Systems Thinking and Ecosystems

Pavlov, Oleg V.; Kim, Yoon Jeon; Whitlock, Christine

Food Fight: Teaching Systems Thinking and Ecosystems

In Schrier, Karen (Ed.). Learning, Education, & Games, Volume 3: 100 Games to Use in the Classroom and Beyond. Publisher: ETC Press. 2019.

9 Pages Posted: 24 Jan 2020 Last revised: 4 Nov 2021

See all articles by Oleg V. Pavlov

Yoon Jeon Kim

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Christine Whitlock

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Date Written: December 30, 2019

Abstract

This chapter describes a pedagogical framework called Game-Based Structural Debriefing (GBSD). In GBSD, teachers integrate off-the-shelf games in the science curriculum to teach systems thinking skills such as recognizing complex causality and feedback loops. We co-designed a five-lesson curricular unit with three middle school life science teachers and two Master teachers. The study used Food Fight, which is a two-player online game developed by the educational software company BrainPOP. In Food Fight, students learn about the coexistence of plants and animals within an ecosystem.

Keywords: video games; learning; systems thinking; K-12 education; curriculum

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Pavlov, Oleg V. and Kim, Yoon Jeon and Whitlock, Christine, Food Fight: Teaching Systems Thinking and Ecosystems (December 30, 2019). In Schrier, Karen (Ed.). Learning, Education, & Games, Volume 3: 100 Games to Use in the Classroom and Beyond. Publisher: ETC Press. 2019., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3511479