Teaching rural development must reflect the breadth and complexity of the real world situation. Time limitations may restrict the teacher primarily to presentation and discussion of the field's many facets, leaving little time to consider how these diverse elements interact. Even if careful course planning and strict adherence to a course outlined provide classroom time for such consideration, only advanced graduate students are likely to have sufficient expertise to readily understand the relationships, real or hypothesized, resulting from these interactions.

Alternatives in the classroom include giving these relationships only cursory, descriptive treatment, or digging into them with analytical fervor, thereby causing many students a great deal of chagrin. A third alternative is demonstrating interactive aspects of rural development with a game. Such a game is discussed in this paper.