Playing with Purpose: Non-Digital Game-Based Learning for Conceptual Understanding

Vol. 5
2026

Kiran Qasim Ali
n

Abstract

Through non-digital games, in a low-resource classroom. I provided structured play for conceptual understanding, reasoning, and student agency, Tensions regarding inclusion, accuracy, and cognitive demand are discussed.

Why Games? A Pedagogical Response to Contextual Constraints


     Forty-five students sat crowded into a room with cracked walls, balancing science textbooks on shared desks. The ceiling fans whirred against the Karachi heat, yet the room remained thick with silence. When I posed a question about atomic structure, only a few students responded, most looked down, waiting for the lesson to pass.

     This was not simply a matter of disengagement. It reflected the broader conditions of science teaching in government secondary schools in Pakistan: large class sizes, limited resources, and science lessons oriented toward memorization and text-translation rather than conceptual reasoning. Constraints of this kind tend to narrow science learning to the reproduction of facts, sidelining the disciplinary practices of questioning, explaining, and conceptual abstraction.

What kind of pedagogy could invite broader participation while also addressing the cognitive demands of science learning?

     For me, this raised a more fundamental question: What kind of pedagogy could invite broader participation, while also addressing the cognitive demands of science learning? I turned to Game-Based Learning – not simply as a response to contextual constraint, but as a way to reconfigure how students engaged with scientific knowledge.

     Conceptual learning. In this approach, games do not function as vehicles for delivering content, but as deliberately structured environments, where students can interact with disciplinary ideas – identifying patterns, testing claims, and encountering conceptual tension (Cheng et al. 2022). The design of each game aims to mirror aspects of scientific thinking: conjecture, critique, revision, and reasoning. In doing so, Game-Based Learning offers the possibility of shifting science learning from passive reception to active inquiry (Gee, 2004).

From Concept to Classroom: Structuring Play for Science Learning


     Through my research and school-based educational work, I taught high school students for a limited period, in government-owned, public, low-resourced schools in southern Karachi, Pakistan. To explore how games could support learning in the science classrooms where I was teaching, I designed and implemented a series of low-cost, non-digital games, over several weeks of teaching science to high school students. Each game was developed in response to specific curricular topics such as electronic configuration, periodicity, and chemical bonding and was carefully aligned with a specific learning outcome. I worked with readily available materials such as beads, circular paper templates, and printed cards, focusing on formats that could be adapted easily to a low-resource setting.

    I did not treat games as add-ons or breaks from instruction. Instead, I positioned them as core teaching tools, with time allocated for guided play, peer interaction, and structured debrief.

     In the section below, I reflect on three classroom episodes that illustrate how these games unfolded in practice – what they enabled, where they fell short, and what they revealed about the pedagogical work of play in science teaching.

     Episode one: Making the abstract tangible
. When I introduced the concept of electronic configuration, I chose not to begin with orbital notation (1s², 2p⁶…) which, in my experience, intimidates students. Instead, I designed a board game Element Factory, to build both familiarity and engagement before moving towards abstraction.

     Each group received circular templates representing electron shells and a small bag of beads to represent electrons. The central rule of the game was simple: follow the 2n² rule to construct configurations for the first twenty elements. Points were awarded for accuracy. When any group challenged another’s configuration; if their challenge was correct, the opposing team lost points.

   

    Figure 1. Students engaged in Element Factory game.

     However, in the midst of this lively play, a student raised a provocative question: “If the second shell can hold eight, why not twelve? It fits!” Her group defended the claim with confidence, pointing to the ample physical space left on the circular template.
 At that moment, the opportunities and risks of the game were clear. By representing electrons as beads, I had made an abstract concept tangible, but it also unintentionally reinforced a misconception that physical ‘fit’ determines electronic structure.

      Perkins (1991) argues about such ‘fragile knowledge’, where surface features obscure underlying principles. The game had done precisely what I hoped that it had, surfaced a misconception into the open, but it also revealed the fragility of Game-Based Learning without timely scaffolding.


      Scaffolding. In order to deal with it, I chose to pause the game and re-frame the task. I told the class, “At the knowledge level, placing beads may be sufficient. But at the analysis level, you must explain why the rule exists.”

      I invited the students to imagine an alternate world: “What would the periodic table look like, if electrons had no limits?’ This speculative exercise shifted the conversation from physical arrangement to principles of atomic stability. Students began to reason that the stability of shells, not spatial capacity, determines the configuration. One student concluded, with noticeable satisfaction: “So it is not about space. It is about stability.”

     Through Episode One, the game achieved more than memorization of the 2n² rule. It led students to confront a misconception, articulate their reasoning, and ultimately grasp that electronic configuration reflects energy stability, rather than physical space.

     Episode two: From retrieval to reasoning
. After introducing electronic configuration, I shifted focus to the first twenty elements. To build fluency with names, symbols, and atomic numbers, I adapted a UNO-style card game, Elementing (shown in Figure 1), where each card displayed an element’s name, symbol, and atomic number. Students played by matching the cards based on any of these attributes. The game-play generated high volume retrieval practice, which is known to strengthen memory traces through repetition and cue-based access (Lawsin, 2023).

    Figure 2. Elementing card game.

     However, when I asked, ‘Why are sodium and potassium in the same group?’ the room fell silent which indicated that while the game had reinforced recognition, it had not supported reasoning.
To address this limitation, I designed another board game titled, Lost in Periodic-City. Students assumed the roles of ‘lost’ elements navigating the periodic table. Progress was contingent on justifying placement using clues related to properties, valency, or reactivity.

Rules… shape the kind of thinking a game elicits – whether it consolidates recall, fosters analytical reasoning, or opens space for conceptual abstraction.

     This revision shifted the cognitive demand from matching to explanation. When one group placed oxygen among metals, another objected by saying, “Reactivity is not the same as metallicity.” A misconception that might have remained invisible in written work became a point of collective interrogation. The transition from Elementing to Lost in Periodicity illustrates a central principle in game-based pedagogy: it is the structure of a game that determines its cognitive demand. Rules are not incidental features of play; they shape the kind of thinking a game elicits – whether it consolidates recall, fosters analytical reasoning, or opens space for conceptual abstraction.

     Episode three: Embodied reasoning – structuring roleplay as game
. To deepen students’ understanding of chemical bonding, I designed ‘Chemical Elements Talk’ – a role-based learning game that brought abstract concepts into embodied form. In this game, each student was assigned an element and given a role card with electron configuration, valency, and bonding tendencies. The game’s outcome was to form stable compounds by interacting only with elements whose configurations allowed bonding under defined constraints. Rules were enforced collectively as students could only ‘bond’ if both parties could justify the interaction using shell diagrams and valency reasoning.

     Misplaced bonds were subject to peer challenge.
 In one round, sodium “offered” an electron bead, and chlorine “accepted.” The room erupted in laughter, yet the insight was authentic. A typically quiet student, playing chlorine, reflected aloud, “Now I see why chlorine always wants to take electrons, as it is not full yet.”

     The intended learning outcome of understanding bonding, as a function of stability and shell completion was achieved not through static diagrams or direct instruction, but through interaction, inference, and constraint-led enactment. This structure elevated role-play beyond performance. It became a reasoning activity, where progress depended on explanation, and engagement required inhabiting the logic of chemical behavior.

     Role cards, bonding constraints, and peer verification introduced challenge and accountability, while the physical dimension gave students access to conceptual ideas through movement, dialogue, and spatial representation. Yet the game also exposed a subtle but significant flaw in its design. When helium’s turn arrived, the student assigned to it hesitated, “I cannot do anything. My shell is already full.”

     Inclusivity. The science was accurate, as helium is inert, but the role was inert as well. The structure had unintentionally excluded a learner by assigning a correct, yet passive position. I revised the design: helium became an “observer” tasked with commenting on bonding interactions, and explaining why certain elements could or could not form stable compounds.
This small adjustment underscored a critical principle that scientific accuracy must be accompanied by pedagogical inclusivity.

     In games intended to foster reasoning, every role must offer meaningful entry into the learning process. Without this, participation becomes uneven, not due to conceptual difficulty, but due to the limitations of design. For structured play to support learning equitably, it must be attentive, not only to what is scientifically valid, but to what is educationally enabling.

Time Management

     The time required depended on the complexity of the game and the purpose for which it was being used. Shorter games, focused on retrieval or basic practice, could be completed within approximately 20 to 25 minutes, leaving the remaining lesson time for instructions, discussion, and a brief debrief. However, games that involved reasoning, peer challenge, misconception work, or multiple levels required more time. In some cases, I used block periods, where two science periods were available together. This provided a longer teaching slot and allowed more time for gameplay, discussion, and conceptual debriefing.

     When only one regular period was available, I sometimes limited the game to one level or one main task rather than attempting to complete the full game. This helped keep the activity manageable, although it also meant that some parts of the game had to continue in a later lesson or be simplified. For this reason, I would not say that all educational games can be completed within a fixed 15- or 20-minute slot.

     Time management is one of the main challenges in using games for science teaching. A practical approach is to design games in smaller segments, identify which part of the game is essential for the learning outcome, and reserve enough time for debriefing. Without debriefing, students may enjoy the activity but miss the conceptual purpose of the game.

Reflections


     Across these episodes, I did not approach Game-Based Learning as an add-on activity; instead, I used it to reconfigure how my students engaged with scientific ideas. Each game shifted not only the students’ level of participation but also the nature of the cognitive work. What began as an attempt to make abstract content more accessible, gradually became an inquiry into how games could surface misconceptions, support reasoning, and render conceptual structures visible. Through these experiences, I came to realize that the value of Game-Based Learning lies not merely in its motivational appeal, but in its potential to reorient science education toward reasoning, dialogue, and reflective judgement.

     When games are designed with attention to structure, scientific precision, and inclusive participation, they become more than playful activities. They become thinking spaces where students can try out ideas, test their logic, and grapple with complexity on their own terms. In a low-resource classroom, where access to conventional teaching tools is limited, this potential felt not only pedagogically rich, but also necessary.

References

Kiran Qasim Ali
n is Senior Instructor
 at Aga Khan University,
Institute for Educational Development, Karachi, Pakistan and can reached at
 Kiranqasim.ali@aku.edu