Game Design as Reflective Pedagogy in Entrepreneurship Education

This paper argues that having entrepreneurship students design board games, rather than play digital business simulations, offers a low-cost constructionist pedagogy in which students' designs reveal their grasp of business concepts. Drawing on classroom observations in Canada, France, and Brazil, the study is framed as design-based research and presents its findings as a work in progress rather than settled results. The research situates itself within constructionist learning theory and experiential entrepreneurship education, using commercial games such as Catan, Monopoly, and The Game of Life as reference points for student work.

The central observation is that students' first designs tend to be simplistic, often resembling trivia formats, but grow more sophisticated through feedback and iteration. Representative projects illustrate this range: "Empreenda Aí" models the complexity of Brazilian taxation, "Footprint Factor" builds sustainability trade-offs into its mechanics, and "Conquer the Market" was developed on the Tabletopia platform. Through these examples, the authors argue that the design process cultivates creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, cultural awareness, and project management skills.

These conclusions rest on qualitative observation rather than measured outcomes, a limitation the study acknowledges. The evidence therefore supports the plausibility of game design as a reflective learning activity, but not yet a demonstrated improvement in entrepreneurial competence. The cross-national scope, spanning three countries, adds breadth to the classroom evidence, though the study's time frame and sample sizes are not characterized in detail. Its contribution lies chiefly in proposing a method and a framework for evaluating student-created games as evidence of conceptual understanding.