Serious games to explain animal husbandry
Résumé
Several studies led us to think that it is urgent to better equip teachers of general education to talk about livestock farming in class. One of the teachers’ requests was to succeed in making this topic more attractive for secondary school students. Therefore, we decided to develop serious games to talk about animal husbandry in class. We thought interesting to ask students from the agricultural sector to create these games: this way, young future breeders will talk and explain their job to young people from the general society. With the support of the French Ministry of Agriculture, we organised a competition to create serious games on animal husbandry. Students from agricultural secondary and advanced level schools had 5 months to produce a serious game to explain what livestock farming is all about. Twenty-five teams of various ages (from 13 to 21 years old on average) participated to the competition. Among the four themes proposed, the one on ‘livestock farming and environment’ was one of the most dealt with by the teams: it is a sign that the future breeders have understood the challenge around this subject and wanted to discuss it. The format of the game to be created was free, but most of the 25 games were board games accompanied by quiz cards. The jury was particularly vigilant regarding the technical level of the questions, the vocabulary chosen, and the support provided to the teachers, as the aim was above all to create games intended for the general public. This was the most complicated part for the competitors, who often misunderstood the knowledge gap between them and the general society. The games selected by the jury will then be corrected and validated, in order to be put up on the website www.ressources-elevages.fr, which was built specifically to provide tools for teachers wishing to talk about animal husbandry in their classrooms.