Designs for Learning with Adaptive Games and Teachable Agents

Abstract

Recent reports indicate that the grounds for children’s attitudes towards math and beliefs about their mathematical abilities are often forming already in preschool and early school years. To prevent mathematical inequalities among children, this chapter suggests a didactic design between the individual/collaborative and the digital/physical. Research has proven digital games to be useful when students are learning early math, especially if games include constructive and direct feedback and especially if the level of difficulty adjusts to students’ own level and pace, i.e. adaptive games. If the game story is narratively and emotionally engaging and if the paradigm of learning-by-teaching is implemented in the game design, there are yet more potentials for learning. This chapter presents the potentials of implementing such games in preschools and illustrates how children are engaging with math towards pro-social ends. From a design theoretical perspective, game logs and empirical video data from two research projects are analysed. The results indicate that children in the ages 4–5 can benefit from using math games as a complement to math carried out with physical material. The results indicate that games possibly can be used (or designed) to encourage collaboration/pro-social behaviours in a way that reinforces early math concepts.