Week 4: Ending The Challenge

This will be the final blog….final reflection of the pandemic game. It was great playing with the board game that is related to our field of study (public health). The game becomes interesting when you are familiar with the rules. We have been playing the pandemic game for about 3 weeks. It’s not just like a simple board game; this requires effort and collaboration of ideas. This is a game which makes you think about the next step. This isn’t easy to win. You don’t always win the game. But the mistakes you make teach a lot.

During the first try, even though we were playing as a group, all the members were playing individually without any communication. But we realized that this is not the way, but to share ideas and knowledge. Discussing what should be done and what shouldn’t be done before beginning the game is really important. Mainly, it means pre-planning. During the game, it is important to focus on the roles and making using of your turn effectively. The game became more attached to reality when the role of money/budgeting was introduced. Playing with the involvement of budget was something different and more serious. Even though we did not fully use the money we had, we lost the game as we were more concerned about not exceeding the amount we had rather than focusing on curing the disease.

We were able to benefit from the game with a real…..but not so real experience of curing the disease and helping the world from epidemic. I really loved the way how such a board game could teach us our course without book learning from the classroom.

Thank you Mr. Adam for being our teacher.

And thanks to all the team mates who cooperated in this game.