These are all great questions! Sorry for the delay—we’ve been in schools collecting data. We are collecting a ridiculous amount of data, including kids’ conversations while playing the game, understanding of ratio, interest, and, as well as we can, problem solving. The latter is the one that we have struggled with the most, but we are continuing to pilot new items. Attitude is a more proximal measure, focusing on enjoyment of the experience. In interviews we ask kids about whether they think this resembles the kind of math they usually do, and of course the answer is no. However, I am not sure if we are just capturing the effect of the videogame, or whether the kids are really attuned to the problem solving experience.

The game is part of a larger platform that is already being scaled to schools around the country (part of the Atlantis Remixed platform), and although this one is not ready to be scaled, we expect that once it is, it will be available through that format. Other games we have made through an earlier version of this platform (Quest Atlantis) were used by thousands of kids. However, there are still questions to be asked about how to support teachers to use these kinds of games in classrooms (kids generally play this game for at least three class periods), so the question about how to scale is an important one.

Finally, we really see this as being a school game. Understanding ratio is hard, and games are not ideal for teaching kids this content; rather, we see this game as creating an opportunity to explore the application of these ideas in a space that can be responsive to their thinking. But the teacher’s attention and insight into students’ understanding is really key to the overall experience.

Hi Beth,
You have found one of the big issues that we CONSTANTLY struggle with—the amount of structure a game or tool should supply. In fact, the subtitle of the grant is: “an exploration of structure and context,” because we are just not sure how to do this best and it is one of the things that we are intentionally playing with and studying.

I think the boxes DO limit how kids think about the problem, particularly the fact that we force kids to write answers in fractions instead of decimals really impacts their approach to the problem. We do that for a reason (we don’t want kids randomly dividing using calculators, which hides what about ratio they are trying to figure out). However, earlier versions of the game included no problem solving tool at all, which also seemed to have its own challenges. All I can say at this point is that I share your question, and I am hoping that at the end of round 2 (or more likely, round 3), I will have a more nuanced answer.

This is a tough nut to crack for everyone. Whenever I cover for a colleague’s math class I am amazed at the difference and variety of techniques and strategies that students use to answer the same problem. Very different to the way I learned math! Please keep me posted of your findings!

HI Kathy,

We did a comparison study several years ago, funded by the Spencer Foundation, and found a lot of differences in student engagement although no significant difference in learning. However, that was with one teacher who had 15 years of experience as a PBL teacher, so it was best case scenario all around. Mostly that study told us that the version of the game we used in that study didn’t support kids’ mathematical reasoning OR their problem solving in the ways we envisioned, which led to us wanting to study the design of this game more systematically.

So far what we know is that all kids learn about ratio from playing the game, even kids who have already completed a unit on ratio. What has surprised us is that we aren’t finding an effect yet for the form of feedback that they receive. Having been in these classrooms for the entirety of game play (we worked with 12 classes this year), we think that this is because of the huge impact the teacher has on how the game plays out (which we think is pretty cool). So we are spending the summer looking more closely at the teacher during these implementations, and also beefing up our feedback and our overall game experience so the difference might be a bit more salient.

If they want to try out a few more games, have them go to www.mathsnacks.org and try Game Over Gopher. It is a tower defense game and focuses on the coordinate grid. Probably more like 6th or 7th grade level, but even kids who like math seem to like it.

Thanks for the link!

Hi Joanne,
A version is available now, but there is a BETTER version (we hope) that will be available in a month or two. I would love to get your feedback—we have been glued to your NCTM book on ratio and proportion throughout this project!

I would love to see the new version this summer. Whenever you are ready to share, just let me know (jlobato@mail.sdsu.edu). So glad the Essential Understandings book was helpful! We are doing a proportional reasoning unit as one of the two proof-of-concept units for our new video-based online learning project and would be interested in anything you are learning from yours about kids’ ratio development, especially in contexts like speed, fuel efficiency, etc.