Climate change has severely affected water resources (WRs) today, highlighting the importance of promoting education on WR adaptation (WRA). The goal of WRA education is to cultivate learners’ cross-oriented system knowledge (COSK), responsibility for WR environment (RWRE), value of public benefits (VPB), and empathy and negotiating thinking (EaNT). This study developed an issue-situation-based board game, namely Water Ark, to enhance participants’ WR knowledge. In this study, participants were divided into four groups with each playing the role of a WR-related organization: the government, agricultural sector, industrial sector and public guild. Scales and interviews were used to assess participants’ performance. The findings revealed that during the game, participants gradually changed from profit-oriented self-interest strategies to altruistic strategies based on social public benefit. Furthermore, after playing Water Ark, participants’ COSK, RWRE, VPB, and EaNT were found to have improved substantially. Thus, Water Ark is believed to be a useful tool for assisting WRA education.

This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named “Element Enterprise Tycoon” (EET), which creates a scenario combining chemical elements, techniques, and products in daily life. The game cards are designed to motivate students not only to retrieve information about chemical elements, but also to be proficient in chemistry. Moreover, the game creates opportunities for group interactions and competitions to engage students in learning chemical elements as they do in regular science curricula. The EET has been field-tested with a group of middle school students to evaluate its applicability. Empirical data show that students improve their understanding of chemistry concepts with a median level of effect size. In particular, students achieve better performance in terms of chemistry-related technique concepts. The follow-up interviews reflect students’ positive feedback and attitudes toward science learning through board game playing and their willingness to continue to play the game. It is suggested that learning through science games can indeed help students learn new chemical knowledge.