i am very happy to support my student Merrill Yen in his poster A preliminary investigation of game-based learning in Mathematics education: a case study from graph theory to be shared at the 17th international conference on Computer Supported Education, this April in Porto :-)
its abstract reads:
Graph Theory is the study of graphs which helps to model relationships between objects. Graph Theory has applications in diverse fields allowing us to understand relationships across different fields. This makes it imperative to call for educational materials to engage students to learn Graph Theory. Since Graph theory is highly visual and has low barriers to entry making it a good field to explore game based learning, we aimed to explore the use of off-the-shelf games to help to keep students engaged and interested with Graph Theory concepts. Participants engaged in a series of games with underlying graph theory concepts infused in them. Interviews to examine the effects of how the games may have brought about understanding in the graph theory concepts were administered after the intervention. It was hypothesized that the games might increase the participants' engagement with graph theory by making the learning process more interactive and enjoyable, improving their understanding of the concepts introduced and the real world applications of Graph Theory. The intended impact of this project is that students emerge with a comprehensive knowledge of Graph Theory and an understanding of how policy makers and curriculum designers may apply games to teach mathematics.
