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William G. Daly

January 21, 2006

Updated 4/22/06 

Proposal for Division of Tasks Between EMAT7650 Applied Project

and EMAT8990 Seminar

The EMAT7650 Applied Project is an extension of a project done for EMAT6700.  The EMAT6700 project, which has a link on the previous page, is a Math Jeopardy game which was created by the author for the purpose of teaching Algebra I students.  The outcome of this game was quite successful in that it engaged students in a broad range of randomly selected Algebra I topics, including EOCT preparation in an entertaining, lightly competitive format. 

While it is true that competitiveness can be a detriment to creativity, I found student response to this game very positive provided that it was not overused.  It was gratifying to see even previously unmotivated students “charge” the white board, writing solutions to selected topics.  A positive response from students, however gratifying, is not sufficient basis to include the game into the curriculum.  The question of whether the activity enhances student learning needs to be addressed at some point. 

            Given what appears to be results that exceeded my expectations in terms of student engagement, I selected as my EMAT7650 applied project an extension of this game to address a number of student recommendations and a number of shortcomings.  I am tying the EMAT8990 Seminar to this game in the form of structuring a research project to attempt gauge the game’s value in both engaging students while at the same time enhancing learning.

EMAT8990 Goal

            Time remaining in the secondary school semester will likely prohibit executing the following task.  So the intent is to set the stage to engage in research using the EMAT7650 project.  The goal for the EMAT8990 seminar is to create a sample structure to test the quality of student engagement and effectiveness of student learning using the EMAT7650 project.  A preliminary overview follows.  Anticipating that I will be teaching physics next year, I selected a physics oriented topic, but also with a mathematics angle to allow incorporation into mathematics classes as well as physics.  This will also broaden the pool of potential subjects in the event I am able to enlist other teachers into the research, both mathematics and physics teachers.  The initial test topic will be rudimentary vectors targeted to the 11^th grade level.

Entire classes of students will be randomly selected to be either a control or test group.  This will require approval at the county level.  The deliverables of the seminar will form the basis for this approval request.  The first deliverable of the seminar is to create a pretest on vectors.  A second deliverable of the seminar is a set of lecture notes that both test and control groups will be subject to.  A third deliverable is a set of “worksheets”; the worksheets will be in “hard copy” format and in “game format”.  The term “game format” is an eternal loadable set of questions (see EMAT7650 goals below).   A fourth deliverable is a follow up student questionnaire to gauge students’ perceptions toward both enjoyment and learning value.

As stated above, execution probably cannot occur within the current semester, in the future both the control and the test group will receive the same lecture within an equal number of class periods.  The control group will complete the hard copy worksheets within a specified number of class periods.  The test group will not complete the worksheets, but rather play the game with the same content.  Both groups will then take the same pretest again, with a subsequent statistical analysis of the results.  Again, the actual execution and subsequent analysis are deemed to be beyond the scope of the seminar.

EMAT 7650 Applied Project Goals

Address student feedback:

• Students expressed disappointment, in the original game, about getting a second crack at the problem if team one missed.   A goal of the applied project is to allow the second team a shot at the answer if team 1 missed, for a reduced point award.  This goal will also address a shortcoming that I observed.  The alternate team was idle during opponent play.  If the allotted time is reduce for the second shot at the question, the idle team will be motivated to work on the problem while the primary team is working “just in case they miss”.  The time limit for the second try will be substantially reduced to encourage the idle team to work during primary play.
• Another student complaint was that the correct answer is not displayed after incorrect tries are exhausted.  A second goal of the applied project is to include a display of the correct answer after all tries are exhausted.

Address teacher observations:

• The original game has only two teams.  A variety of classroom dynamics suggest that this is not necessarily optimal division of teaming.  Factors such as student level, course content, class size and acceleration versus review, suggest that a selection of the number of teams may prove useful.  Therefore a third goal of the applied project is to add the flexibility to select the number of teams.  This will also address a suggestion made by a colleague that there is the potential, assuming this game appears on the teacher website, to allow individual play and display “Student High Score” for individual player.

• The original game was geared toward Algebra 1.  At the present time, teaching Physics renders the game useless to me as well as anyone not teaching Algebra 1.  Furthermore, even Algebra1 teachers would not have the flexibility to alter the game content without significant changes to core program.  Since this is a daunting prospect for even the author, any changes are virtually out of reach to any other users.  Consequnetly, a fourth goal of the project is to create a front end set up screen in which course and topics may be selected to populate the game board.  These topic selections, are to be created from external files so that the programming of the game itself remains unchanged.  This will generalize the game to different levels of math and perhaps even different subjects.
• A fifth goal is to provide, in addition to being able to load specific courses and topics, loadable questions and answers from outside of the game structure so that the core of the game does not have to be altered to adapt providing additional questions.
• A secondary goal is to provide internal timing for the primary team and reduced timing for the secondary team to relieve the teacher or referees from having say and then enforce “time is up”.  This was a deficiency in the original game.  Although important, this is treated as a secondary goal in that it is perceived by the author as a task that may exceed the scope of the present task in terms of resource commitment.  If it is implemented, the time limits must be included in the external file to allow teacher control over these time due to varying student level or teacher misjudgment of the required time per question.  Initially, the front end interface will have a “time factor” entry that will allow an across the board time scaling to the allotted time per question for the purpose of a quick adjustment by a particular user.  Time per individual question will be included as a parameter in the external “question / answer” files.  This feature will be temporarily disabled if it is not achievable within the semester.
• Finally, the name of the game must be changed.  Initially the game introduction is “Math Jeopardy”.  Given the broad academic intent of the current project, the game is generalized to “AcademiaMania” to both convey the broad intent and to imply something enjoyable to students.  This will also required a new voice over in the original game.

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