Mastering Modern Board Game Design to Build New Learning Experiences: The MBGTOTEACH Framework

The paper presents MBGTOTEACH, a step-by-step framework designed to help teachers adopt, adapt, and create modern board games (MBG) for classroom learning. Its central argument is that modern board games, with their transparent mechanisms, meaningful player agency, and ease of modification, are particularly well suited to education, yet teachers need guidance and hands-on experience to use them effectively. The framework lets teachers choose among using an existing game, modifying one, or designing a new one, depending on their level of commitment and skill.

The framework was tested through two teacher workshops, one face-to-face with 15 primary and secondary teachers and one online with 11 teachers and researchers, alongside several case studies. Both sessions produced measurable increases in how teachers perceived board games as teaching tools, with gains of +1.07 face-to-face and +0.69 online. However, the author cautions that these results are limited by small samples, teachers' low prior game habits, and effects that depended heavily on debriefing, so they should not be generalized broadly. Prior game experience was also found to shape perceptions, suggesting that brief introductory workshops alone are insufficient.

A recurring theme is that game design for learning is iterative and uncertain. Playtesting frequently reveals that a game fails to engage or teach, requiring teachers to return to earlier steps, collect evidence, and verify learning outcomes before classroom implementation. The author therefore recommends modifying existing games as a safer alternative to designing from scratch, and positions the framework as a flexible, non-deterministic guide rather than a fixed recipe. The paper acknowledges that deeper use requires a solid game-design background, and it calls for further quantifiable research on which games suit particular subjects, student ages, and class durations.