Digital Humanities-Based Games: A Novel Approach for Mitigating Plant Awareness Disparity

Plants comprise around 80% of all biomasses on Earth and contribute to sustainability. The growing disengagement from the natural world has consequences that reflect the culture and health of contemporary society. One is Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD), a difficulty in perceiving plants and their importance in the environment. Although the origins of botany are older than the Digital Humanities (DH), there are few theoretical references exploring the correlations between DH, botany, and Digital Games. This work investigates the resonances between DH and botany regarding modern data-centric approaches applied to contribute to mitigating PAD. As a contribution, we offer games centered on storytelling and visualization of botanical data (textual and non-textual) in digital open data repositories. We adopted the methodology proposed by Xexéo et al. (O Que São Jogos: uma introdução ao objeto de estudo do ludes. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 2017) to create DH-based games. As initial results, we offer open-source digital and cross-platform interactive games and their analogue equivalents in e-books published by Vieira et al. (Quiz Botânico—Conhecendo as plantas—Volume 1. 1a Edição. Cerceau Editora, 2023; Modelos de Jogos para o Ensino de Botânica. https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.0872320067 , 2023). The games represent various types of food plants (conventional, non-conventional) and toxic plants, describing their main characteristics and typical uses. The game can be played in classrooms (with or without internet access) as complementary tools to support botany teaching, generating new opportunities for active and continuous learning for students of fundamental levels. In conclusion, DH, through its interdisciplinary methodological approaches, can dialogue with botany, exploring critical thinking in classrooms creatively. We conclude that innovative educational practices mediated by DH are one of the central attempts to alleviate the issues of PAD in the future.