Gamification: A Solution to Disinterested Students in Math Classrooms

 When people hear you are a math major, their response is usually along the lines of:

“Wow, you like math? Good for you; I could never do that.” 

We seem to be noticing, as time goes on, less and less enthusiasm for math. Often, this is not because of the content, but rather, because of the way that it is presented. In a research article by Jair J. Aguilar, “High School Students’ Reasons for disliking Mathematics: The Intersection Between Teacher’s Role and Student’s Emotions, Belief and Self-efficacy,” we see the statistic that out of 350 participating students in grades 11-12 from a school in northern Mexico, 21% said they disliked math because of a “lack of interest or apathy” in the subject matter. Is there a solution to this? What is a way that students can have an interest in the content and applications without actually changing the content itself? Well, one possible answer to this question is gamification. 

What exactly is gamification? To put it simply, gamification adds a game-like element to a task such as student homework, therefore encouraging engagement and participation. A couple of weeks ago, our Technology for STEM Educators class had a guest speaker, Dr. Kevin Smith from Dakota State University, come and talk to us about gamification in the math classroom. He led us through examples of different ways to implement this strategy in our own classrooms as future math teachers. As a whole, we found these exercises fun and interesting as well as a great way to get to have a more positive mindset about math. 

Now, knowing this classroom teaching method, where do we go from here? According to Karen from the Naturally Creative Classroom blog, five possible ways to incorporate gamification into your classroom include:

• Friendly competition
• Offering rewards
• Creating teams for learning and collaboration
• Using a game-like tracking system, such as experience points
• Game-like terms, for example: homework is a task, test is a quest, etc.

There are also different online resources that teachers can access, such as Prodigy, Quizizz, and Happy Numbers. These can be tailored to contain different types of content for different grade levels to fit the needs of students. 

As previously stated, there is a trend of students being disinterested in math, with a high percentage of this being a result of finding the content disinteresting. There are many options to explore in order to solve common complaints about math being boring and not having future applications in the lives of students, and one of these is gamification. Gamification gives us, as teachers, a chance to positively influence students to find interest in the subject of math.

Carson Haak, Rose Gutenkauf

Links to articles and websites referenced:

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1327942.pdf 

https://thenaturallycreativeclassroom.com/5-powerful-ways-to-increase-student-engagement-in-math-with-gamification-for-education/ 

https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/ 

https://quizizz.com/?lng=en 

https://happynumbers.com/?redirect=no 

Math Isn’t Always About Math

While I may not be a teacher yet, I know middle and high school students everywhere are always complaining about math. Students will constantly ask the questions: why are we doing this? Why is this important? When will I ever use this? And to be honest, these are questions that go through my head as well. With that said, it can sometimes be difficult to answer these questions depending on what’s being taught. I know that from this point on in my college career I will most likely never teach what I am learning. So, sometimes it can be hard to see the bigger picture and these students are feeling the exact same way. Many students will choose to not use math in their future careers. Therefore, they don’t understand why they should learn math beyond the basics. So, the real question is why is it important for all students to keep learning math and how do we respond to these tough questions? 

The easiest way to respond to these students is to say that math isn’t always about math. Which can be confusing to think about, but it’s true. Math gives many students trouble, and it can be extremely frustrating for them. This is why many of these questions occur. Math not only tests our abilities in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and so on, but it also tests our problem-solving skills and perseverance. Those two reasons are why all students should not give up on math. These skills are extremely useful, and they will continue to be used for their entire life. Someday these students will experience failure in some aspects of their lives, and they will have to find ways to overcome these failures. Students will go through failures constantly. If students start quitting on themselves for something like math, how might that translate into other parts of their lives? That is what students need to realize. 

As teachers, or in my case, future teachers, we need to show the importance of math and how that can be applied to our problem-solving skills and perseverance. But this is not just true for math, but for all subjects. In all classes, students go through hardships and need to find ways to overcome them. The goal is to teach students that there are skills to be learned beyond the subject itself. Now, most students will probably brush it off when you tell them they are working on their problem-solving skills and their perseverance. But someday they’ll realize the importance of what they were doing, and they’ll thank you for showing them. 

Overall, what I wanted everyone to get from this is that math isn’t just about math. There are other skills to be learned like becoming a better problem-solver and learning how to persevere. Teachers can try and explain this to their students by relating how these skills are useful in their everyday lives. But this is mainly something that students will have to learn on their own. So, the next time your students ask you, when I ever use this? Maybe you’ll have a response.