Teaching Systems Thinking Through Game Design Curricula: The Case of Hexacago Health Academy

The Hexacago Health Academy, a five-year game-based public health curriculum for mostly Black high school students in Chicago, is presented as a model for teaching systems thinking through game design. The program, which draws on Freire's critical pedagogy and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model, aims to build STEM engagement among underrepresented youth by having students analyze "wicked problems" such as food insecurity and community violence and then prototype their own public health games. Its central argument is that cooperative play and student-led game design can make difficult systems concepts accessible while addressing structural inequality in the lives of learners.

The study's primary data come from the 2022 iteration, a fifteen-day workshop at the University of Chicago's MADD center involving 19 students with a mean age of 16.5, 63% Black and 58% female. Curricular activities progressed from modeling socio-ecological systems and analyzing research, including a path analysis of welfare reform's effects on single mothers and children, to playing commercial and serious games, and finally to reskinning game mechanics into original prototypes. Findings are drawn from semistructured interviews and workbook analysis, and participants reported heightened self-confidence, emotional engagement, and a sense of belonging, with all stating they would recommend the program.

The authors situate these outcomes within prior research linking game play and game design to gains in system analysis, problem-solving, and transfer to real-world contexts. They also acknowledge important limitations: the sample was small and suburban-skewed, eleven participants dropped out, and transportation and scheduling barriers prevented some interested students from attending despite mitigation efforts such as paid time, bus passes, and snacks. Taken together, the work positions game-based pedagogy as a promising but context-dependent approach that merits further study before broader claims of generalizability can be made.