By Judit Kardos

American Game designer, Chris Crawford, defines a game as a fun and interactive human activity for two or more people with a goal to accomplish. A puzzle is a game for one person, it requires no human interaction.

In fourth grade, I received a book by Johannes Leichmann, Mathe mit Pfiff.  This little book, filled with mathematical puzzles, kept me occupied for the entire summer. I solved most of the puzzles in the book and fell in love with problem solving.

Fast forward to Spring of 2021. A year of isolation and online teaching due to the pandemic affected everyone. My students did not want to participate in class; they did not even talk to each other when put in small groups. My own excitement for teaching was also at an all-time low. I desperately needed new tricks to revitalize my online classes.

I remembered how much I loved puzzles and games as a young kid, so I enrolled in an online course on Gamification and Playfulness in Mathematics in the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics Education. In this course, taught by Márta Barbarics, we learned that games provide intrinsic motivation for learning through challenging but manageable goals, social interaction, and positive feedback. Intrinsic motivation leads to persistence and success while extrinsic motivation quickly vanishes when the external pressure or reward is removed.  

I had to try out how this would work in my own class. For my first game, I used the “Animal Race” template from the Genially website. I added questions about sequences to the template, created an answer sheet for students, and was ready to pilot my new game in the next class. Students were put in groups of four, one person rolled the dice and moved the tokens on the board. Students took turns moving their tokens and answering questions about sequences. They could only advance when their answer was correct. The game completely changed my students’ online interaction. They started to talk to each other, they laughed, and they joked about their animal avatars. They were excited to guess the answers, they corrected each other, and they asked questions.  I was blown away by the effect the game had on my students. They were happy. They were learning.

I have since added games to all my classes. I introduce probability in my statistics class using two games. In the first game, students bet on what numbers will come up as the sum of the numbers on two dice. The second game is a card game. A card is selected at random from three cards. The first card has the image of a goat on each side, the second has an image of a cat on each side, and the third shows a cat on one side and a goat on the other. Students are shown one side of the selected card and they must guess what is on the other side of the card. My student, Nick Ngai, created an online version for this game.  Students can easily access the Sum of the Dice game on their phones or on their computers. In the classroom, I share the cat/goat game using a projector, and when teaching online, I share my screen. Students enter individual guesses in a shared Google sheet and we later use this data in our “strategy” conversation.

I frequently review material in class using a Kahoot game, for example Logic Review and Probability Review. Even these low-stakes trivia games create excitement in class. Students love to play just for the fun of the game.  There are no sticks and no carrots; no one is ever penalized for not playing, and the only reward is success in the game.

A game is an excellent community builder. On the first day in Calculus class, we play a round of the board game Just one. If students finish all the problems for the day in Real Analysis, we play a game of Take Five. Recent advances in Neurology have proven that we can playfully develop students’ mathematical skills using games.  Games foster reasoning skills, problem solving, and modeling ability. Games have simple rules but require students to create complex logical arguments and intricate strategies. Creating similarly high-level mathematical arguments would require a much higher level of mathematical knowledge.

You may think that playing games in a math class is a loss of precious time that should be devoted to “coverage.” However, in my experience, the time devoted to games pays a great dividend by making students focus and think harder, by fostering community, and by creating intrinsic motivation and buy-in. In the great words of Sir Ken Robinson, “Education is not a mechanical system, it is a human system. People either do want to learn or do not want to learn.’’ Creating classes that are interactive and fun is a great way to foster students’ interest and motivation in learning mathematics at any age.

There is a wealth of free online resources for creating one’s own games. Learning Apps, Socrative, and the already mentioned Genially provide lots of different templates for potential gamification.  Quiz games can be easily built using Kahoot, Quizizz or Jeopardy.

I believe that the preparation of our current pre-service K-12 teachers should include online games. During the pandemic, I spent endless hours playing games on Math Playground and Matific with my six-year-old nephew. Online math games create a bridge between the enactive and iconic stages of human cognition, as described by Jerome Brunner, and provide for a more seamless transition from one to the next. There is nothing more beautiful than watching a six-year-old solve a linear system of two equations and two unknowns while playing an online game about a candy store.

Jane McGonigal in her TED talk says, “When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help.” I hope you agree.

Judit Kardos is Associate Professor of Mathematics at The College of New Jersey where she also serves as the current Summer Reading Program Faculty Fellow.