Development and appraisal of new biodiversity loss and conservation game (BLACOG) in assessing students’ knowledge, attitude and perception of biodiversity conservation

Educational programmes have for long been used in biodiversity conservation; however introduction of board games in these efforts is a new concept, which is believed, will result in greater achievements. This study developed and used a new educational board game, biodiversity loss and conservation game (BLACOG) and a test-questionnaire to appraise the knowledge, attitude and perception of biodiversity (KAPOB) among secondary school students in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Students (n=283) were selected randomly from three schools, two of the schools serving as Experimental Groups while the third served as the control-group. The test-questionnaire, rated on a Likert scale, was administered to both the control and experimental groups prior to and after five exposures to the game, though the control-group did not have any exposure to the game. Data obtained were tested for significant differences in the mean scores of the respondents in the tests prior to and after the game. T-test comparison of the mean scores of the pre- and post-tests of the Control Group was not significantly different (p=0.207). The mean scores in the post-test were significantly higher than the pre-test scores in both of the experimental schools. The results also showed that, though the mean scores of the pre-tests of the control and experimental groups were not significantly different, the mean score in the post-test of the Experimental Group was significantly higher than in the control group. This study showed that the use of BLACOG had significantly positive effects on the KAPOB of the experimental group and that the game could become a veritable educational tool for teaching biodiversity conservation in schools.Keywords: Conservation education; biodiversity conservation; biodiversity loss; biodiversity education game.