The Floristic Relay Game: A Board Game to Teach Plant Community Succession and Disturbance Dynamics

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This game introduces students to the concept of succession and plant community dynamics. Students learn that plant communities are dynamic (they change over time and space), and that these changes result from interactions between plants and biotic and abiotic aspects of their environments, as well as random events. Students play a board game in which each student represents an imaginary plant species. Students explore plant community dynamics by interacting with each other and responding to chance events.

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Primary or BEN resource type	Assignment/activity (non-laboratory)
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Format	html
Ecological Core Concept	Communities -- Species composition, abundance, and diversity Communities -- Disturbance, assembly, and succession Communities
Drought & Water-Ecosystem Services Collection	Off
Conservation Targets Under Global Change Collection	Off
Big Data Collection	Off
Editor's Choice	No
Audience	Undergraduate upper division 15-16 Undergraduate lower division 13-14
Pedagogical Use Description	The authors designed this game to teach plant community dynamics because a game with dynamic rules is an effective way to teach a dynamic subject. Students can easily learn complicated sets of rules in order to play a fun game, and the game allows students to watch community dynamics that would take many years to observe in nature within a single class period. Unlike other lessons that are limited to regional examples of succession, this game can be played anywhere in the world. At the end of the game, students report on the results and discuss with the class what they have learned. To apply their new knowledge, students predict changes in the community and attempt to make the community change in specific ways.
Keywords	dynamic; change; time; plant; succession; community; interaction; disturbance; TIEE; pedagogy; student active; inquiry based
Life science discipline (subject)	Ecology
Primary Author Controlled Name	Vanessa B. Beauchamp Juliet C. Stromberg Elena Ortiz-Barney
Primary Author Affiliation	Arizona State University
Primary Author email	elena.ortiz- elena.ortiz@pcmail.maricopa.edu barney@pcmail.maricopa.edu jstrom@asu.edu
Rights	Copyright 2005 by Elena Ortiz-Barney, Juliet C. Stromberg, Vanessa B. Beauchamp, and the Ecological Society of America.
Resource Editor	Unknown
Reviewer A	Unknown
Reviewer B	Unknown
Date Of Record Submission	2007-11-05

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