Impact of Playing Function Fighters

Many secondary students in the United States are struggling to find success in math creating a preparation gap in the U.S. STEM workforce. Based on national and international assessments, little improvement has been made over the past several decades in U.S. secondary students' knowledge and skills in higher-order math tasks like translating and modeling real world scenarios into the symbolic language of math. Digital game-based learning may hold the key to filling this knowledge and skill gap of U.S. secondary math students. Research on digital-game based learning has found it to be an effective tool for increasing higher-order skills. Digital game-based learning has also been used successfully with secondary math students to increase both cognitive and affective outcomes. The current study examines the cognitive and affective impacts of playing the digital learning game, Function Fighters. Function Fighters was designed to be supplemental practice focused on the conceptual knowledge and skills needed to translate algebra word problems to systems of equations. Students were recruited from geometry classes to ensure the math content in the game was not new content to the students. The study took place in the students natural learning environment. Students were assigned five online research assignments to complete through their math class Google Classroom—a pretest, a posttest, and 3 practice activities. For the practice activities students were randomly assigned to either the gameplay group or the text-based practice group. Students completed the study assignments after completing their in-class math activities and after school hours. Of the 103 students recruited for the study, 29 students completed all five of the study assignments. The low number of participating students meant the study did not have the power needed to detect a difference between the two groups. However, students' performance on the pretest and posttest revealed a knowledge and skill gap on translating algebraic word problems to equations and on the prerequisite skills of translating one-variable equations, two-variable equations, and graphs to an equation. The relationship between math achievement and math attitudes has also been documented through national and international testing. Therefore, measuring students' math attitudes was another focus of the study. Similar to national and international testing results of secondary students, students in the study reported low attitudes towards math scores, specifically in math self-concepts and math interest. Implications of the findings for future use of Function Fighters and other digital learning games is discussed.