Board Game Design for Conservation Organization: A Study on the Campaign for Javan Hawk-Eagle

This study establishes a formal framework for designing educational board games to assist conservation organizations in their marketing and public awareness campaigns. The primary objective is to bridge the gap between conservation goals and public education by mapping specific learning objectives—categorized into cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains—to concrete game mechanics and components. By integrating these educational goals into the game design process, organizations can create interactive tools that effectively communicate complex environmental issues, such as the preservation of the endangered Javan hawk-eagle in Indonesia.

The methodology involves a systematic process of direct observation, literature review, and iterative prototyping. Researchers developed a board game titled Eagle Dance, which incorporates card drafting, dice rolling, and resource management to simulate the habitat and survival challenges of the Javan hawk-eagle. To validate the framework, the team utilized expert reviews to confirm that game actions successfully aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives. Furthermore, the study conducted pre-test and post-test evaluations with twenty participants to measure the game's impact on knowledge retention.

Findings indicate that the board game significantly improved participant understanding of the subject matter, with average test scores increasing from 53.3% to 75.5%—a 22.2% improvement. The study concludes that board games serve as a highly effective, interactive alternative to traditional educational media like posters or leaflets. While the current research focuses on cognitive outcomes, the authors suggest that the framework is scalable for broader wildlife conservation efforts and recommend future studies to explore the game's impact on the affective and psychomotor domains of learning.