Josh and his colleagues are huddled around a table studying their map. Based on the fear in their eyes, the situation looks dire. The last epidemic had come out of nowhere, spreading three diseases around the globe into areas that Josh and his team had struggled to help only minutes before. “What are our options?” Josh asks. “São Paulo is critical, any more breakouts around there and we could lose all of South America.” Heather shakes her head. “Forget São Paulo,” she says. “We can stamp out the outbreak in the Middle East if we move quickly. Can we send somebody to Karachi right away?” Josh and Heather aren’t frantic public health officials or epidemiologists. They’re sixth graders playing Pandemic, a new board game in which two to four players work as members of the Centers for Disease Control on a mission to save the world from an outbreak of deadly diseases. For video game–obsessed students, a typical board game just won’t cut it. But Pandemic, a 2008 release from Z-Man Games, is part of a new breed—a designer board game, complete with the name of its creator on the box, like the author of a book. Unlike traditional board games like Candy Land, Sorry!, or Trivial Pursuit that are based on rolling the dice, moving a pawn, and doing what the space dictates, modern board games are much more complex. In Pandemic, for instance, students work cooperatively to carefully manage and deploy resources. Though there’s still some element of chance, it’s strategy and communication that ultimately win the game. And a healthy dose of critical thinking and other library information skills doesn’t hurt either.

Illustration by Laris Leetaru

The meta-level of gaming

Why are board games suddenly so hot? For starters, new board games involve a sophisticated thought process that challenges kids to think critically. While playing the game, Josh and his friends engage in “an inquiry-based research process by applying critical-thinking skills (analysis, synthesis, evaluation, organization) to information and knowledge in order to construct new understandings, draw conclusions, and create new knowledge,” to quote performance indicator 1.1 from the second standard of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. These standards set the framework for instruction within our school libraries by defining the required skills, actions, responsibilities, and self-assessment strategies for our students. In other words, Josh and his pals were literally doing library work while playing a game. This strong connection between games and library standards was the foundation for a two-year grant the American Library Association received from the Verizon Foundation to look at gaming and literacy in libraries. There’s no question that students love gaming. A 2008 Pew Internet & American Life study, “Teens, Video Games, and Civics,” found that 97 percent of teens play games. Though this study focused on video games, designer board games can be more effective than their digital cousins because they’re often more closely aligned to library and classroom instructional needs. To once again use library terminology, games like Pandemic require students to “conclude an inquiry-based research process by sharing new understandings” (AASL standard 3, performance indicator 1.1), while they “participate and collaborate as members of a social and intellectual network of learners” (AASL standard 3, performance indicator 1.2). Instead of using a worksheet or a conventional lesson to address these skills, though, the learning takes place as a natural and authentic part of playing these board games. Josh had no idea that the game was tricking him into learning because he was busy having fun.

Gaming is the answer

If you asked Heather how to “use both divergent and convergent thinking to formulate alternative conclusions and test them against the evidence” (AASL standard 2, performance indicator 2.2), she’d probably think you were nuts. Like many students, however, she’s been a gamer pretty much since birth, and she’s a natural at reviewing the current game situation and coming up with possible strategies that might lead to a solution. Like Josh, Heather was engaged in a research process, but she just didn’t realize it because she was demonstrating the required information skills as a natural part of her game role. Engaging students to learn through play isn’t a new idea, and, based on how many animals learn that way, the connection is probably instinctual. For some educators, however, this concept is a radical notion that threatens to topple the wall that they’ve carefully constructed to separate work and play. Just as some media specialists, teachers, and parents have viewed graphic novels (and in some cases still do) with fear and skepticism that these popular titles won’t lead to “real” reading experiences, the idea of playing games in school can be a tough sell. Why is my library system so successful at introducing board games into the classroom? Mainly because we’ve aligned our game collection with state and national curriculum standards. Being able to describe games like the other library resources—as another instructional format that can be used to boost student achievement—has led to a very high level of support from boards of education, superintendents, principals, and teachers.

The alignment process

Designer board games are typically aligned in one of two ways, by theme or mechanics. For example, Amun-Re (Rio Grande Games), a game that’s set in ancient Egypt, is part of our ancient civilizations collection, along with other games about Greece, Rome, and China. It’s a perfect game for middle schoolers. In terms of its mechanics, Amun-Re is an auction game: players bid to control provinces along the Nile that provide an assortment of benefits. As students get caught up in its theme, they’re provided with a healthy dose of contextual information that can serve as an anchor for further learning. They also become familiar with the vocabulary, ideas, and concepts of this ancient civilization and are better prepared to learn (and retain) information presented in later lessons. Other games are directly aligned through their mechanics. Bolide (Rio Grande Games) is a racing game that requires the use of physics. Instead of using dice or another element of chance to determine their moves, players apply their knowledge of vectors and momentum as they determine the path they will follow. Gamers are free to push their cars as fast as they’d like, but they must respect the laws of motion. If they ignore them, they’re likely to wind up crashing into the racetrack’s walls. It’s no surprise that this game is incredibly popular with high school physics teachers.

Developing a collection

Whether you’re selecting a game to support your own information standards or someone else’s, make sure it’s allied with your curriculum. It must be stressed, however, that this isn’t the first test that a game should pass before it’s added to your collection. Brian Mayer, a specialist of library technologies who works with me, recommends following these four guidelines when selecting and evaluating games: The game must be authentic. If you want students to get into them, it’s critical that you provide real games—and not some worksheets with dice masquerading as “educational games.” If there’s any doubt about a game’s authenticity, just ask yourself if it’s something you’d want to take home to play for fun. The games in our collection are authentic games designed for enjoyment. In fact, none of them were originally created for school use. For example, even though LetterFlip (Out of the Box Publishing) pushes elementary students to consider phonics and word families as they work to decode their opponents’ secret words, it wasn’t designed as part of an English language arts lesson. It was designed to be fun. I’d recommend being skeptical of any game that was designed for instructional use. The game needs to be in agreement with your curriculum. After finding an authentic game that might work in your library, the next thing to do is to make sure it reflects local, state, and national curriculum standards. All of our games are allied with AASL’s new standards as well as with New York State’s learning standards. That means we can easily justify the use of our games during class time, just like any other library resource. Conversely, even though we might love to play a certain game, we won’t add it to our collection unless we find a strong curriculum connection (though it may be great for after-school play in a public library). But most of the time, a well-designed game requires students to use the inquiry, critical thinking, and information-processing skills that are highlighted in AASL’s standards. Time is a factor. School schedules are insane, and class periods are short. So most games need to be set up, learned, and played in about 40 minutes. It’s possible to play longer games, but they’ll probably need to be modified so they take up less time to play. Another option is to play the game over the course of several days. 1960: The Making of the President (Z-Man Games) is a high school game that re-creates the presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. This complex game features multiple rounds that have natural stopping points, where the game’s progress can be recorded. Return on investment is important. Just because it takes a long time to play a game doesn’t mean you can’t use it. Some of our best games take upward of two or three hours to play. These longer games, however, are more carefully evaluated for a strong positive return on investment. If a teacher is going to spend a week on a game, then it had better be one of the best ways for students to learn a topic. Here I Stand (GMT Games) re-creates the 1517–1555 Wars of the Reformation with a high degree of historical accuracy—and it takes eight hours to complete! This is an incredible investment of time and resources for a classroom, but the game also provides students with a highly immersive re-creation of what happened at that time in history.

Tools to help

Aligning games presents a new, and yet very familiar, challenge for librarians. We’re accustomed to providing materials that support classroom needs through curriculum-based content. With games, there’s the added dimension of alignment through mechanics that’s often revealed only through playing the games. At first glance, Oregon (Rio Grande Games) seems like a nice middle school game about westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. When you actually play it, though, you quickly realize that it’s really a math game that addresses Cartesian coordinates. On top of that, chances are good that you’ve never heard of the designer board games mentioned in this article. Luckily, there are tools available to help you select games for your library. The best general reference is BoardGameGeek, an online catalog of just about every board game ever published, supplemented by rich metadata and user-submitted reviews and explanations. Additional reviews and information can be found at Games for Educators, including a newly launched Game Finder. More information on games and standards can be found on the School Library System of Genesee Valley BOCES site, including my colleague Brian Mayer’s direct alignment of designer board games with the AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.

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Author Information

Christopher Harris (infomancy@gmail.com) is coordinator of the School Library System of the Genesee Valley BOCES in New York and a regular SLJ contributor. His favorite board game is Puerto Rico.