Online board games with educational purpose

Before video games were able to move players across digital worlds, players moved their pieces across finite, physical boards, and random obstacles or misfortunes were generated by the rolling of dice and the drawing of cards. The board game may still be going strong today, but over the format’s 3,000-year history, the last few decades have seen it meet its future: the video game.

When the board game moves to a digital format, you can’t lose the instructions, you can’t lose pieces, and you’re able to play online, on the move, anywhere you choose. A board game in mid-play can now sit on your smartphone, ready to be continued whenever you decide to pick it up, no time to set-up, no time to put away.

But what of the board game’s history in education? How did that unfold, and where are educational games to engage students headed as they move from tabletops to modern technology?

What is an educational board game?

An educational board game is a board game that is either adapted to help players learn about specific topics, or a board game that helps teach players about certain topics as a byproduct of playing. The educational board game pulls on the psychological engagement levers of socialisation, curiosity, challenge, commitment, risk appetite, and progress. If any of those sound like exaggerations, think about family gatherings where games of Risk or Monopoly have turned into arguments, or bouts of Scrabble where the dictionary has been bought in and still failed as referee.

A classic like Monopoly teaches players about budgeting, speculation and strategy; word games like Scrabble and Boggle have obvious language arts benefits; even Guess Who? can teach children to be more articulate and logical through learning to ask more appropriate questions. While not every board game can be called explicitly educational, even the more basic-looking board games encourage behavioural development by getting players to get behind a set of rules and stick to them in order to play fairly. On a basic level, most board games have some educational benefits baked in.

History of gamified learning through board games

While the exact origin of why board games were invented is virtually impossible to know, it’s without refute that at some point in history board games were used as educational games – originally as a way to encourage morality.

For example, Snakes and Ladders started off as a game representing one’s journey through life, with ladders symbolising good deeds, advancing a player forward, and bad deeds symbolised by snakes sending players backwards. Monopoly, ironically enough, was originally invented by a socialist reformer to represent the evils of capitalism, but after it was sold to the Parker Brothers, it became a rudimentary playground upon which children could learn the fundamentals of capitalism.

Because a board game is a “hands on” experience for players, they have to immerse themselves in the topic, and develop social skills and problem solving skills in the process. This makes it an ideal medium through which to educate children. They can develop critical thinking, problem solving, maths skills and literacy, all while engaged in a game that develops soft social skills. If the content of the game is educational too, and it passes the test of being fun, it becomes a win-win tool for teachers.

Evolution of board games into digital spheres and online

Just 10 days before the first iteration of The Oregon Trail video game was coded in BASIC in 1971, it existed as a dice and card game that would allow players to advance over a map, learning about westward expansion in the process. It was, before fate intervened, an educational board game, home-made by a student teacher.

The Oregon Trail has gone through many iterations, but can now be played, in a far more advanced manner than early versions, on your smartphone. This is one of the most famous examples of an online educational board game.

The advantages to going digital with your educational board games

While it can’t be denied that there is something quite exciting about sitting around a table with a group, setting up a board, assigning roles, and engaging in a sociable game, from an educational perspective this wastes time setting up the game, putting away the game, and accounting for lost pieces and damages.

It also can’t necessarily be played outside the classroom unless students have sets at home, and may require intervention if rules are not followed or understood. While learning to follow the rules and enter into the social aspect is part of what makes an educational board game effective with kids, a few disruptive players could completely derail a board game for the majority. A board game in an online format also affords a set-up and put away-free period of gameplay, where one player cannot be hampered by another’s refusal to follow the rules.

Digitising your board game, like Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger did with The Oregon Trail might not go on to be a huge commercial success, but it could allow you to create and customise a very effective interactive teaching experience for your students. The online format also allows you to collect data to analyse how students are performing, and how effective the game is. This means that creating educational board games in this format is not only beneficial to your current students, but also to your future students, who will benefit from any opportunities for improvement you implement on subsequent games.

Customise a learning path for your students

The online educational board game format is a great way to engage students of all ages in any number of topics. The Dynamic Path™ allows you to create and customise just that – giving you access to all the games on the Drimify platform to create multiple interactive levels, with progress signified along a customisable learning path. This learning path could be a visual representation of a journey, such as a historical route, an engineering structure, or even an ecological or biological system. This takes the place of the traditional board.

Each level or interactive module within the game gives you the opportunity to introduce variety to the gameplay, and even increase the difficulty level as they progress by making the questions harder, or the puzzles more complicated. The main advantage of taking the educational board game format online with the Drimify platform is that it can be played at home as well as in the classroom through a link or a QR code. This means it offers extra utility as a more fun version of homework, allowing you to use classroom time to focus on elements that require more face-to-face teaching.

Create effective online educational board games easily

You no longer need to be roommates with another teacher who knows how to code in order to digitise your educational board games like The Oregon Trail guys. The Drimify platform is designed to be simple to use, so you don’t need any experience to create an effective long-form learning narrative that encourages children to engage in a particular topic.

The board game format, applied to specific teaching topics, encourages students, be they kids or even adults, to go from passive learners to active participants in their education. Making it an online and interactive experience will appeal to digital natives who are more confident with screens and devices than with cards, dice, and player pieces.

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