Designing BioSim: Playfully encouraging systems thinking in young children

In this chapter, we discuss the design decisions made when creating the game mechanics and rules for BioSim, a pair of game-like participatory simulations centered around honeybees and army ants to help young children (ages kindergarten through third grade) explore complex systems concepts. We outline four important design principles that helped us align the games and simulations to the systems thinking concepts that we wanted the students to learn: (1) Choose a specific and productive focal topic; (2) Build on game mechanics typically found in children's play; (3) Purposefully constrain children's play to help them notice certain system elements; and (4) Align guiding theories to game rules, and vice versa. We then highlight how these guiding principles can be leveraged to allow young children to engage with complex systems concepts in robust ways, and consider our next steps and goals for research as we continue to iterate and build on these games.