Final report for WPDP22-005
Project Information
One challenge to sustainable agriculture is helping farmers adopt principles of integrated pest management (IPM). Most IPM education for farmers is conducted through traditional trainings. To provide an alternative approach our team designed an innovative pest management board game that simulates pest management decision making. In the game, players take on the role of a pest management team who are given the task of producing the healthiest crops possible while using their limited resources efficiently. Each choice the players make has consequences on the field composition and their final score. Currently, there are only three playtest copies of the game but most of our test audience reported feeling more engaged and learning more through the game compared to traditional training experiences. The goal of our proposal is to make this tool more widely available and accessible to agricultural educators (extension educators, agents, and agricultural teachers). To accomplish this, these funds will allow us to improve the art quality of the game, produce and disseminate more copies, investigate the addition of more game scenarios, create a web-based tool to support game facilitators, and put on multiple workshops at land grant universities in the western region or with similar partners. To further improve this tool, we will collect feedback during and following each workshop from agricultural educators and from participants who play the game.
Objective 1: Increase the availability of game-based learning through increased production of the Pest Friends board game as a tool for agricultural educators in the western region to teach their clientele about IPM through experiential learning. No other board games are available currently that cover these concepts and allow this type of simulated learning experience.
Objective 2: Increase the comfort level and capacity of western agricultural educators to use this tool to educate farmers and agriculture students about the principles of integrated pest management. Using a new tool can be difficult and running a new board game straight out of the box can be intimidating to those who don’t play board games often. The genre is new and innovative, so providing additional training and support resources will help educators use the tool successfully.
Objective 3: Design, play test, and investigate the creation of new scenarios to add to Pest Friends that are tailored for a wider variety of audiences. Our plan is to integrate other agricultural concepts and scenarios into the game such as vegetable crops, livestock production, greenhouse production, and the use of cover crops. With additional modules and scenarios, the game would be used by educators more often and within other commodity groups. Currently the board game has one scenario, which limits the ability of educators to run the game multiple times with the same audience.
Objective 4: Gather additional feedback about the educational value of Pest Friends from those who play the game including farmers, agricultural students, producers, and a wider variety of audiences. At this point, we have only play tested the board game with approximately 40 individuals. We will also explore the use of this tool to help the public understand the complexities of farming, pest management, and other sustainability concepts.
April-December 2022
Cover Art Development
A professional artist with graphic design experience will improve the visual nature of the game, making it more appealing with a more professional look. Incorporating additional symbols and graphics will make the game easier to learn and play.
Facilitator Aid Development
Critical test audience feedback indicates that new facilitators may get intimidated trying to run the game themselves. Currently, facilitators must keep track of damage occurring to the crop, insect reproduction, the effects of predators, and the effects of player choices. To streamline these factors for new facilitators we will develop a web-based program to keep track of the consequences of player decisions and how populations fluctuate throughout the game. The design will feature a user-friendly interface focused on ease of access for all experience levels.
Setting up Workshops
At the start of the project, we will secure partners to help us conduct workshops for agricultural educators. Our primary emphasis will be partnering with states/territories in the Western region. Partners will include Cooperative Extension systems, agricultural teachers’ associations, professional organizations, and other educational groups. Workshops will be scheduled for 2023 and 2024.
Game Production
Once cover art is completed, 600 copies of the board game will be printed to distribute to agricultural educators at workshops. Currently, we work with The Game Crafter LLC in Madison, Wisconsin.
Additional Module/Scenario Play Testing
We will develop additional modules and scenarios to expand the variety of the game, with scenarios involving livestock, greenhouses, and weeds. We will also play test these modules to evaluate their educational value. This activity will be ongoing throughout the course of the grant.
January 2023-March 2025
Workshops
Once copies of the game are available and partners are secured, we will schedule workshops to provide partners with at least 4 hours of hands-on training, copies of the board game, access to the web-based program, and other supporting materials.
Ongoing Data Collection
All agricultural educators attending the training will be added to a mailing list for ongoing communication about the game. Reminders will be sent to encourage their participants to fill out post-game evaluations and return to us for future improvements, to provide game updates, and learn about new expansions in production. They will also be contacted to gather feedback about the development and play testing of new modules for the game.
Education
The pest friends board game was designed as a curriculum to use with farmers and other agricultural audiences. The game is focused on experiential learning by allowing players to make choices and experience consequences. Within the game the players get to make choices about scouting, what controls to use and how to manage risk in their crop. By doing and practicing concepts in a simulated experience players are able to be more engaged than they would be with a typical slide show presentation on these topics. Early 2023, we received 350 copies of the board game, this is much less product than we anticipated due to inflation. With these copies in hand 2023 was a year in which we reached a large number of individuals with our program. We conducted a combination of in person and virtual workshops teaching educators in Idaho and other western states. This included a workshop for Idaho school teachers from our region, extension workshops in Hawaii and Montana, and with the WERA 1017 group, which is a Multistate Research Coordinating Committee and Information Exchange Group that facilitates collaboration of Integrated Pest Management research and extension/educational programs in the Western States and Pacific Basin Territories. Attendees were trained on how to use the Pest Friends board game and given a copy of the board game to use for educational purposes.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
1.Increase the availability of game-based learning through increased production of the Pest Friends board game as a tool for agricultural educators in the western region to teach their clientele about IPM through experiential learning.
As part of this process, we have worked to develop the pest friends board game which is now fully peer reviewed and published. We received 350 copies of the board game in early 2023 and have been primarily distributing the games to partners in the Western States, so far, we have copies in the hands of educators from Idaho, Alaska, Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Hawaii, California, Washington and Oregon. Those with copies include Extension Educators, Extension Specialists, Public School Teachers, Home School Groups and College Professors.
To expand game-based IPM education, we completed a professional redesign of the Pest Friends board game and launched a dedicated website (pestfriends.org) to support facilitators. As of early 2024, we produced 350 high-quality physical copies and trained 156 verified moderators. Copies have been distributed to educators in 13 western states including Idaho, Alaska, Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Hawaii, California, Washington, and Oregon. Institutions using the game include Extension offices, public schools, homeschool groups, and colleges. Over 4,600 individuals have played the game to date, demonstrating wide adoption across varied audiences.
2.Increase the comfort level and capacity of western agricultural educators to use this tool to educate farmers and agriculture students about the principles of integrated pest management.
We developed a complete facilitator rulebook and created an online companion tool at pestfriends.org to assist educators in running the game. The website guides moderators through each game phase, automates field changes, and provides a full digital version of the game. Of the 156 trained moderators, many have independently implemented the game, with usage tracked through the website’s data logging feature. In-person and virtual workshops have helped educators gain confidence in using the tool, including trainings in Hawaii, Montana, Idaho, and with groups like WERA 1017. We also introduced an email follow-up system to maintain contact with educators and provide ongoing support and updates.
Of these users, they have combined played the game with 2,673 individuals as of May 2025. This indicates that the tool is a success as multiple users are implementing it into their educational programs. Of games that our team (Loomis and Thomas) played with audiences we played with 1,986 individuals using the digital tools above. This indicates that those who we trained have and will continue to play the game with more individuals than we will as the creators.
Design, play test, and investigate the creation of new scenarios to add to Pest Friends that are tailored for a wider variety of audiences.
We have successfully released the Pest Friends: Events Expansion as a peer-reviewed publication, now available online in a print-and-play format. This allows any educator with a copy of the base game to download and use the expansion materials. The expansion includes 15 event cards and 8 alternate colonization cards, creating 1,680 possible gameplay scenarios to increase variety, challenge, and critical thinking in pest management decision-making. While an app-based tool to support this expansion is still under development due to the complexity of variable outcomes, the core materials are already in use.
In addition, we are actively beta testing a weed management scenario in collaboration with the University of Idaho Weed Specialist. Selected play testers are currently using and reviewing the materials before final publication and peer review. We have also started development of Pest Friends Junior, a simplified version of the game with a strong youth focus. This new edition uses comic panels in place of dense instructional text and is designed to be more accessible for younger players. It is still in early development and will undergo classroom testing in the coming year.
The events expansion has been officially published as of 2024, the weed expansion is anticipated to publish in 2025 and the Pest Friends Junior board game is anticipated to release in 2026.
Gather additional feedback about the educational value of Pest Friends from those who play the game including farmers, agricultural students, producers, and a wider variety of audiences.
When we submitted our application, we had only played the game with 40 individuals. At this point 4,659 individuals have played the game. As we continue to play the game we gain additional feedback about the value of the game and ways to modify it for new audiences. One audience we are considering is youth below the age of 12 which are not as skilled at reading as our main audience. This type of project would require additional money, but we are exploring other ways to use the game in these ways. We are playtesting with middle school youth with the game to see how youth and teachers respond.
We have expanded our evaluation reach significantly, growing from just 40 participants at the proposal stage to 4,659 confirmed players as of January 2024. To better understand the game’s educational impact, we conducted a follow-up survey with 47 participants, primarily from pesticide recertification courses. Of these, 98% indicated that Pest Friends helped change their mindset about pest management, and 64% said they planned to implement new practices as a result of the experience.
Participants reported several specific mindset changes, including:
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An increased emphasis on scouting and monitoring pest populations before making decisions
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A shift away from reactive pesticide use toward proactive, informed strategies
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Greater awareness of pesticide resistance and the importance of rotating control methods
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Recognition of beneficial insects as key allies in pest management
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More openness to incorporating cultural, biological, and mechanical control options
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A clearer understanding of the economic and environmental costs of over-reliance on chemicals
We are also piloting Pest Friends with youth audiences to explore how younger learners respond to IPM concepts. Early playtesting with middle school students using simplified materials has shown promise, particularly with the addition of comic panels that reduce reading load and improve engagement. These adaptations will help us broaden the reach of IPM education and reach new audiences who might not otherwise engage with this topic. Ongoing data collection continues through pestfriends.org and follow-up outreach to educators.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
The Pest Friends board game is now a fully published, peer-reviewed curriculum with updated artwork, professional graphic design, and companion digital tools. We also published an article highlighting the development and impact of the game in the Journal of the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA). The board game is now available for purchase by educators and professionals worldwide. To date, 220 copies of the game have been sold and distributed, with 156 verified moderators trained to facilitate gameplay in a wide range of educational settings. We have conducted hands-on workshops and trainings with over 80 educators across the Western region, teaching them how to implement the game, utilize the online support tool (pestfriends.org), and deliver a meaningful IPM learning experience.
This was accomplished through multiple workshops and conference sessions, including the 2023 Montana Ag Agents Annual Meeting, WERA 1016 Annual Meeting in Homer, Alaska, Hawaii AgPro Meeting on Kauai, Idaho Ag in the Classroom Spring 2023 workshop, and a training with the University of Arizona Maricopa County Office, along with several smaller meetings with Idaho educators. Pest Friends has also been showcased nationally at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) Annual Meeting in Maryland and the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA) meeting in Des Moines, Iowa. During these events, we made connections beyond the Western region, including with Tennessee State University, where we delivered a virtual workshop to 20 participants. As a result, 40 copies of the board game were purchased by Tennessee partners, and follow-up engagement continues with multiple educators actively using the tool in their programming.
So far, 4,659 individuals have played the game, and survey data shows that 98% of respondents experienced a positive shift in their pest management mindset, while 64% planned to implement new IPM practices. Educators have consistently reported that the game is more engaging and memorable than traditional instruction, helping learners better understand the economic and ecological benefits of sustainable pest management.
In late 2022, we finalized artwork and transitioned to production, resulting in the release of 350 high-quality copies—fewer than the original 600 goal due to rising material costs and design revisions based on peer review feedback. These copies became available by April 2023. To support educators, we created a companion website (pestfriends.org) that guides facilitators through each turn of the game and offers a digital version for remote instruction. While originally anticipated to be complete by mid-2023, the website is fully functional and continues to expand in capability, though app-based tools for new expansions are still in development.
We have successfully released the Events Expansion as a peer-reviewed, print-and-play module that adds 1,680 possible gameplay scenarios. While the website does not yet support this expansion due to complexity, it is freely available online for educators who wish to print and implement it. The Weed Scenario is currently in beta testing, with educators providing feedback on the draft publication. We are also developing Pest Friends Junior, a new version of the game for younger audiences that uses comic book panels instead of dense text to improve accessibility for early learners. This version is still in early stages, with playtesting planned for the coming year.
In response to strong stakeholder demand, we have also developed a Spanish-language version of the Pest Friends board game. The translation has been peer reviewed and approved, and it is currently undergoing final graphic design before release. This version will increase accessibility for Spanish-speaking agricultural communities across the Western region and beyond.
A key milestone came when we showcased the curriculum at the University of Idaho Extension Overall Advisory Committee, which includes 12 statewide stakeholders from various industries. After playing the game, participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive:
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100% said the game was more engaging than a traditional hour-long presentation
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75% felt they learned more through gameplay
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88% saw strong educational value for Idaho youth
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86% believed it was valuable for Idaho farmers
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88% recommended that Extension develop more interactive educational tools like this
A consistently requested feature is the development of materials specifically designed for youth and low-literacy audiences. These suggestions directly inspired the development of Pest Friends Junior, which aims to meet that need through simplified storytelling and engaging visual content.