Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application

MatematiX

Daniela Popit

and Adriana Mihaela Coroiu

Department of Computer Science, Babes

-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Keywords:

Active Learning, Mathematics, Game-Based Learning, Education, Children, Gamiﬁcation, Division,

Subtraction.

Abstract:

The paper proposes the application MatematiX - an application designed and developed with the main goal

of helping children learn math in a simple, interactive and fun way, using the game-based approach. Today’s

education only emphasizes in-person interactions, with the majority of document storage taking place on

online platforms. While most children spend their leisure time on the internet, only a small number of these

platforms provide entertaining and educational content. It follows that the creation of the suggested learning

application is required in light of these problems. MatematiX, was created speciﬁcally for this use and is a

children’s app that offers games and mathematical explanations that require the user to apply math. One of the

numerous approaches to solving this issue is the application that is discussed in this paper.

1 INTRODUCTION

The school system is the ﬁrst thing that immediately

comes to mind when we discuss education. People

either love it or hate it, and our willingness to work

hard to learn the material that is taught in school will

determine how much we learn.

The problem with this system is that not every-

one is willing to spend most of their time trying to

grasp a concept that was ﬂeetingly presented to them

in school, especially when we are talking about little

children who have a smaller attention span than the

average adult. (Asprilia et al., 2020)

Since technology permeates every aspect of our

lives these days, we can’t help but wonder what other

ﬁelds could beneﬁt from technological advancements.

One of them might be the educational system (Liu,

2019). The technology could help enhance the less

applicable and difﬁcult to understand portions of edu-

cation or just offer a more straightforward method of

presenting the core ideas of any given course (Parikh

et al., ).

Mathematics in particular is a science that requires

previously learned concepts to understand new ones.

Sometimes even the smallest problem as not remem-

bering how two numbers are subtracted from each

other can be troublesome (Papert, 2020).

https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6518-1505

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5275-3432

The unfortunate thing is that some children grow

to despise mathematics because they are unable to

fully grasp these fundamental ideas during their early

school years. Furthermore, practising math is not en-

joyable, which is not helpful either.

What if, however, technology could assist with

that? Finding enjoyable ways to teach children fun-

damental mathematical concepts and engaging ways

for them to practice those concepts is the main goal

of this paper (Sardone and Devlin-Scherer, 2016).

In terms of the paper’s organization, we have two

main parts: the ﬁrst part of the paper is concerned

with the presentation of the current math learning

context and the existing solutions and the second part

of the paper is concerned with the process of develop-

ing and testing the application, MatematiX, designed

for this purpose.

2 LEARNING MATHEMATICS

TODAY

2.1 Mathematics Learning in Romania

for 0-4 Graders

The educational system in Romania is effective, just

like in any other nation, but there is an opportunity

for improvement (Marius, 2018). The most persis-

Popita, D. and Coroiu, A.

Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application MatematiX.

DOI: 10.5220/0012621100003693

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2024) - Volume 1, pages 91-102

ISBN: 978-989-758-697-2; ISSN: 2184-5026

tent problem is the exclusive use of classical teaching

and the lack of active teaching. Usually, the teacher

talks during the lesson, and the child memorizes the

teacher’s words, or the methods provided to solve

the tasks without really grasping the concepts (Anwar

et al., 2020).

More interactive teaching strategies are needed in

schools to help learners learn the material. For the

child to understand the concepts and their relevance

or application in everyday life, in addition to memo-

rization, they must determine the most effective way

to present them (Ariansyah and Suprianto, ).

2.2 Active Learning: The Concept

Active learning is a learning method that consists of

actively involving the students in the learning process

(Conrad, 2018). The degree of active learning is con-

tingent upon the extent to which students actively en-

gage in the learning process.

This involvement can be deﬁned as doing some-

thing more than listening to the teacher like par-

ticipating in group activities, learning through play,

technology-based learning, activity-based learning,

group work, and project method, among others (Bon-

well and Eison, 1991).

These activities share common factors encom-

passing key qualities and characteristics of active

learning, such as thinking creatively, applying learned

concepts in practice, utilizing the concepts during the

learning process and explaining the concepts to oth-

ers.

Active learning is the opposite of passive learn-

ing; it is learner-centered, not teacher-centered, and

requires more than just listening; the active partici-

pation of each student is a necessary aspect of active

learning. To develop higher-order thinking skills, stu-

dents need to be actively engaged in their job while

also considering why they are doing it.

In environments (Hyun et al., 2017) where active

learning strategies were implemented, positive feed-

back was received.

2.3 Game-Based and

Visualization-Based Learning

Game-based learning is an active learning method,

that does not limit to creating games for students to

play, it is designing learning activities that can in-

crementally introduce or reshape concepts. Tradi-

tional games can incorporate competition, points, in-

centives, and feedback loops. When designed with

learning principles in mind, games can increase stu-

dent motivation, engagement, and learning (Pho and

Dinscore, 2016).

According to (Fridolin Sze Thou Ting and Shroff,

2016), in recent years, games have been used in tra-

ditional classroom settings to augment active learn-

ing strategies for cognitively diverse students, by pro-

viding a context for problem-solving. Game-based

learning is an interactive learning methodology and

instructional design strategy that integrates educa-

tional content and gaming elements, by delivering in-

teractive, game-like formats of instruction to learn-

ers. Moreover, game-based learning integrates as-

pects of experiential learning and intrinsic motiva-

tion with game applications that have explicit learn-

ing goals, thereby allowing learners to engage in com-

plex, problem-solving tasks and activities that mirror

real-world, authentic situations. For example, results

from a study (Snow et al., 2013), demonstrated that a

computer game simulation of Newton’s laws of mo-

tion was actively effective in helping non-physics stu-

dents understand key concepts of force. In addition,

studies have demonstrated that game-based learning

may enhance student achievement in reading skills,

self-efﬁcacy and student performance (Yoon, 2014).

A signiﬁcant amount of research in game-based

learning has focused on examining student perfor-

mance and how game-based learning is applied, in

order to make the learning process more interactive

and engaging for learners. For the speciﬁc sub-

ject of mathematics, game-based learning assists stu-

dents to visualize graphical representations of com-

plex mathematical concepts in a particularly engag-

ing way (Chang et al., 2012). However, reviews of

the effects of game-based learning research on stu-

dent performance are typically limited to secondary

school students in North America and Europe. For

example, a research study (Kebritchi et al., 2010),

demonstrated that 3-D games help eighth graders

learn algebra more effectively, thus attaining higher

scores on their tests. Moreover, various additional re-

search studies have investigated the relationship be-

tween game-based learning and mathematics achieve-

ment and motivation.

The exploration of visualizations and animations

in learning systems primarily revolves around the use

of techniques that involve visual elements in educa-

tional systems. This is done to enhance and support

the learning process in various ways. An animation is

a dynamic visual medium produced from static draw-

ings, models, or objects posed in a series of incremen-

tal movements that are then rapidly sequenced to give

the illusion of lifelike motion.

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

3 INTRODUCING ACTIVE

LEARNING STRATEGIES

In Romania, the teaching process is currently based

mainly on face-to-face teaching, and, the online en-

vironment is mostly used as an alternative platform

for storing the courses or for submitting and grading

school assignments.

Although most of the teaching during the pan-

demic took place online, via platforms such as Mi-

crosoft Teams, Zoom, or Google Classroom, these

online platforms were not used to their full potential.

In the majority of schools, especially during online

courses, professors typically delivered lessons by dic-

tating and verbally explaining concepts to students.

In the most favorable situations, teachers used an on-

line whiteboard to better explain the concepts. This

process was very stressful, especially for the younger

children who found it difﬁcult to follow the explana-

tions. (Edelhauser and Lupu-Dima, 2021)

Unfortunately, the system of face-to-face learning

is not so different from the one that was used during

online learning. Usually, teachers have too much ma-

terial and too little time to teach it, so some concepts

are not as well understood or as much explained as

they should be. Furthermore, sometimes the amount

of homework that the children get is overwhelming

even for parents.

The pandemic has taught us that dictating the ex-

planations online is not the best kind of learning, but

that does not mean that there are no ways to create a

context where online learning would help the pupils

and ease the learning process for both the parents and

the children. (S

uteu et al., 2021)

Studies (Newton, 2011) have shown that children

may not always grasp all the concepts taught in class,

often requiring a method to recall and reinforce the

explanations provided. Online platforms can serve as

a means for revisiting these explanations in a more in-

teractive and comprehensible manner. This approach

allows students to have accessible, user-friendly ac-

cess to class explanations, making the learning pro-

cess more enjoyable and less challenging for them.

The best idea would be for each school to have

access to a platform that is continuously developing

according to the needs of the children in that school,

for example, if the pupils in the third grade seem

to struggle with retaining the process of subtracting

larger numbers (those with more than two digits), the

school would request the platform’s developers an ex-

planation or a game that would make the subtraction

process easier to understand. The developers would

consult with the mathematics teachers in this case and

come up with the best idea to implement the required

features for the platform.

The problem with this idea would be with the

acceptance of the platform. Usually, parents con-

sider online education through games or animations a

myth, but fortunately, most teachers can see the ben-

eﬁcial use of technology in learning processes (Di-

ana Oblinger et al., 2005). The truth is that the learn-

ing process cannot be done just through online fun,

but online platforms can be of signiﬁcant help.

The solution for such online platforms to have

success would be for the teachers and the schools to

encourage their usage and emphasize how beneﬁcial

they can be. This way the parents would be more

prone to accept the usage of these platforms.

It is important to understand that online learning

cannot substitute the presence of a teacher, especially

when we talk about younger children, this platform

would be intended to help the children review and

practice concepts that they have learned in class.

4 EXISTING SOLUTIONS

This section presents solutions (applications) from

other countries (2), but also solutions from Romania

(3).

4.1 Solutions from Other Countries

4.1.1 Math Games by Teach Me

Math Games (see Figure 1) is a website that features

educational games designed to enhance mathemati-

cal skills, accompanied by video explanations pro-

vided by teachers. The resources are for children from

preschool to eighth grade. The platform offers a di-

verse range of well designed games for each subject.

Also, there are some visual exercises that are available

for some of the subjects and exercises where the chil-

dren must provide the correct answer to a question.

If their answer is wrong, you will receive the correct

answer and a link to the video explanation of that sub-

ject, performed with images on a digital board.

Furthermore, the website offers diverse features

for teachers, including access to the curriculum,

worksheets, and the option to create a classroom-

speciﬁc game with customized questions and an-

swers. This feature also includes a live view of the

results.

The site supplies a series of curricula from differ-

ent countries and all the resources are in English.

Some of the disadvantages are: To gain full access

to the resources of the site, you need to be upgraded

to premium. The explanations are not that interactive

Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application MatematiX

Figure 1: Math Games website.

and are a lot like the explanations from class. Another

downside of this site is the fact that all the resources

are in English, and even if today it is a well-known

language, taught in almost every school, more chil-

dren would beneﬁt from having the resources in the

mother language.

For further references see Math Games website.

4.1.2 Math Playground

Math Playground (see ﬁgure 2) is a website with math

games for children created by Colleen King. The site

is free, kidSAFE COPPA CERTIFIED, and the ads

are controlled. The site is very well-structured and

provides resources for children from kindergarten to

sixth Grade.

Figure 2: Math Playground website.

There are various kinds of games: games that

require the solving of mathematical exercises to

progress in the game, games involving logical think-

ing and puzzle solving that use maths indirectly

through the game, and exercises like tasks. Another

plus is the multiplayer games feature, which lets the

children play the games in the classroom with the

teacher.

Additionally, there is a related platform known

as ”Puzzle Playground” (as depicted in Figure 3),

which features similar games without grade-level di-

visions. These games, sourced from various global

developers, aim to support children not only in en-

hancing their mathematical abilities but also in devel-

oping skills such as logic, strategy, spatial reasoning,

creative thinking, pattern recognition, and problem-

solving.

Figure 3: Math Playground website.

However, there are some drawbacks to these site,

including the absence of explanations for mathemati-

cal subjects, a lack of solutions for incorrect answers

in the games, and the absence of progress tracking or

leader boards within the gaming interface. Also, the

resources are only available in English.

For further references see Math Playground web-

site.

4.2 Solutions Implemented in Romania

4.2.1 Mquest

mquest (see Figure 4) is a website offering virtual

mathematics lessons customized for students rang-

ing from fourth grade to eighth grade. It was de-

veloped by a series of Romanian teachers, as part of

the projects of the site mindfactory. This website has

the purpose of integrating new and advanced learning

methods into the Romanian schooling system.

Because this site was developed by teachers, it

treats all the subjects that are required in the curricu-

lum and the video explanations are very well detailed.

The videos differ from lessons taught on virtual black-

boards to lessons taught on pictures from real life.

Also, together with the video explanations, there is

a short, written explanation of the topic along with

solved problems that students can attempt and check

their answers for accuracy afterward.

Figure 4: Mquest Website.

However, a drawback of the videos lies in their ex-

tended duration, they last between 5 and 15 minutes,

and their limited visual appeal. Essentially, they are

screen recordings of a teacher’s explanation against a

visual backdrop, featuring the teacher’s mouse move-

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

ments, voice narration, and occasional visual effects

such as the appearance of the numbers, or objects that

are used for the explanations. In addition, there are

some videos where you can only hear the teacher talk-

ing and the images of the video are just images related

to the objects that the concept is explained with (i.e.

if they use bottles to explain the subtraction concept,

there is a video of how the bottles are created and also

the teachers stops from time to time from the mathe-

matical explanations and presents the process of pro-

ducing the plastic bottles).

Some other downsides of this website: not all re-

sources are free and besides the exercises, there are

no ways of practising the learned concepts.

For further references see mquest website.

4.2.2 Websites Like Pomul or Y8

These websites contain all kinds of games, not only

math or logic games. There are games developed by

different authors around the world that undergo a thor-

ough selection process before being featured on the

platform.

Figure 5: Pomul Website.

Figure 6: Y8 Website.

Unfortunately, these games do not supply correct

answers for questions the child answered incorrectly

within the game, nor do they provide the correct meth-

ods to solve them. Also, there are no leader-boards

and the content is only available in English.

See also Y8 website and Pomul website.

4.2.3 Educational Magazines Like Edu, Terra,

Media Kinder

This type of magazine includes a code that can be uti-

lized to access resources through their app, which is

available on Android or Windows platforms. The app

provides interactive stories, and the child has to solve

all kinds of problems using different types of knowl-

edge in order to help the main character of the story

fulﬁll their mission. The magazine also contains dif-

ferent exercises that the child can solve or various on-

paper games. Some drawbacks of these magazines

include the inconvenience of installing an additional

app. While the games aid in developing various cog-

nitive abilities, they may not be speciﬁcally tailored to

address subject-speciﬁc needs, as they are more cen-

tered around general knowledge topics. Furthermore,

these magazines are not free and not so well known.

Figure 7: Media Kinder Magazine.

Figure 8: Edu Magazine.

5 TECHNOLOGIES USED FOR

IMPLEMENTING THE

APPLICATION

A web application would be the most suitable choice

to facilitate the use of the application in schools. This

approach would enable access from school comput-

ers as well as from home via PC or phone. Addi-

tionally, teachers could oversee students playing the

games during class, making lessons more engaging

and enjoyable.

5.1 Front-End and Back-End

Technologies

The front-end part, is implemented with HTML5,

Java Script and CSS, because of their compatibility

Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application MatematiX

with any web browser.

HTML5 (Bengtson, 2013) is the latest version of

HTML, which includes new features and improve-

ments over the previous versions. It came with new

semantic tags for better structuring of the page like

canvas, section, main, footer, header, as well as in-

creased support for multimedia and advanced graph-

ics.

JavaScript is an interpreted high-level program-

ming language popular for building online applica-

tions. It is a client-side scripting language, which

means it runs in the user’s browser rather than on the

web server. Also, JavaScript is used to enhance in-

teraction on a Web page, validate form data, create

animations, and control the Document Object Model.

It can also be used as a server-side language together

with systems such as Node.js.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) (Durango and

Academy, 2015) is a style sheet language that pro-

vides a wide range of styling properties that can be

used for the positioning and styling of the HTML

tags. The CSS styles can be applied to any element

of the HTML document by declaring some properties

for a unique id or to a series of elements that have the

same class by declaring some properties for the class

name.

For the back-end part, we chose the Microsoft C#

(Capek et al., 2015a) because the C# programming

language is very easy to use especially when talk-

ing about object-oriented programming. Also when

it comes to tooling, there is a wide range of tools pro-

vided by the .NET framework like Entity Framework

or Identity Framework. Additionally, the Microsoft

framework provides a very secure and easy-to-use au-

thorization and authentication process.

5.2 Application Architecture

The application follows the classic Server-side web

application architecture (see Figure 9). It is divided

into two parts: the Client-side, to which we’ll refer

as the front-end, and the Server-side, to which we’ll

refer as the back-end. The communication between

the two layers is made through HTTP requests.

Figure 9: Application Architecture.

The Server-side consists of a RESTful API (Capek

et al., 2015b), Representational State Transfer, that is

implemented using C# and Swagger. It is responsible

for handling business logic, communicating with the

database, and processing and returning responses for

the requests made by the Client-side.

6 THE DEVELOPED

APPLICATION: MatematiX

This section presents the implementation of Matem-

atix, an application for online practice and review of

mathematical topics covered in class using animations

and games. Since it is a web application, students

from all over the country could access it and beneﬁt

from the learning environment.

Since this solution was implemented for children

in Romania, as we have mentioned, the resources are

only available in Romanian language.

6.1 Registration and Login

The interface of the application is designed to be in-

teractive and child-friendly. To access the application,

the user must have an account. If the user does not

have an account, they can go to the registration page

and register in the application. The information of the

account must be ﬁlled-in the login page ((see Figure

10) to have access to the resources of the application.

Figure 10: Login Page.

6.2 The Main Page

After the login is successful, the user is redirected to

the main page (see Figure 11) of the application. The

menu has a few options. It can take the user to the

main page or to the My account page. The main page

presents the different games and explanations avail-

able for the children, along with a picture and a small

description of each option.

6.3 The ”Subtraction” Page

This page is an animated version of the subtraction

process (see Figure 12). When the user arrives on the

page, he is given a set of instructions. To start the

aderea

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Figure 11: Main Page.

animation, the user must select from the drop-down

menu the number of digits the minuend should have;

it can have between 1 and 4 digits.

Figure 12: The page before the animation starts.

After the minuend is selected, a number appears

on the screen with the number of digits in the minu-

end, and a bottle appears above each digit of the min-

uend, containing as many globes as the digit below

the bottle. Also, a new input ﬁeld is made visible for

the user to enter the subtrahend he wants to be used

for the animation (see Figure 13).

The user must write a number in the ﬁeld and press

the ”Gata

” button. If the subtrahend speciﬁed by

the user is not less than the minuend, the user is in-

formed by a warning, and the subtrahend input ﬁeld

is cleared. If the subtrahend is appropriate, a new but-

ton with the text ”Aﬂ

a rezultatul

” will be provided

to the user, and the subtrahend’s digits are also added

under the corresponding bottles. When the user clicks

on this button, the animation starts.

The animation consists of the movement of the

numbers and the globes for each digit of the minuend.

The globes move from one bottle to another when a

carry is required, and the numbers under the bottles

change according to the carry. At each step, the num-

ber resulting from the subtraction of the digits slides

up under the bottle, and a series of globes from the

bottle corresponding to the digits of the subtrahend

light up in an interactive manner. At the end of the

done

ﬁnd the result

animation, the number under the bottles is the result

of the subtraction

Figure 13: ”The page during the animation.

While the animation is running, the drop-down

box for the minuend, the input for the subtrahend, and

all buttons are unavailable to the user. After the an-

imation is ﬁnished, the user is able to select a new

number of digits for the minuend and the process can

start again.

6.4 The ”Speedtest” Page

The ﬁrst game that the application offers is called

SpeedTest (see Figure 14). This game is designed to

help the user practice basic mathematical operations,

taking into consideration the order of operations and

develop the ability to solve equations faster. When the

Figure 14: SpeedTest game cover.

user accesses the page, the game’s cover image is dis-

played along with a panel showing the game’s high-

est scores. To start the game, the user must click on

the ”

Incepe jocul

” button. The user can also see the

instructions for the game through the ”Instruct

iuni

”

button. After the game’s play button is pressed, the

game board appears on the screen (see Figure 15). At

the top of the game board is a mathematical equation;

on the right side of the equation is an equals sign, and

after the equals sign is the score, which increases de-

pending on the player’s moves. There are 3 ﬁgures

start the game

instructions

Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application MatematiX

on the game board: one player and two monsters.

The player must collect as many coins as the result of

the equation indicates, avoiding the monsters. When

he thinks he has collected all the necessary coins, he

must press the ”Gata

” button.

If the player bumps into one of the monsters, the

game ends and the message ”Ai pierdut

:(” is dis-

played on the screen. If the player collects too many

or too few coins, the message ”Rezultat gres

” ap-

pears. If the player collects the right number of coins,

the message ”Ai c

tigat

!” is shown on the screen.

Figure 15: Game playing.

Figure 16: Wrong answer.

When the user provides the wrong answer for the

equation, the correct method for solving the equation

is displayed on the screen. After the end of the game,

the user can click the restart button and start the game

again (see Figure 16).

done

you lost

wrong answer

you won

6.5 The “Division” Page

This page has the purpose of explaining the division

process for the better understanding of the children.

When the user ﬁrst accesses the page, there is a brief

description of what will happen. The user must select

how many digits the dividend and divisor have. The

interface does not allow the user to select more digits

for the divisor than for the dividend.

Figure 17: Digits choosing.

After successfully selecting the number of digits

of the dividend and the divisor (see Figure 17), an-

other button appears with the text ”Vezi calculul

”.

When the user clicks on this button, the screen dis-

plays the “shell” of a division operation with 2 num-

bers, the dividend and the divisor in the classical po-

sitions.

Figure 18: Final division result.

The division begins, and the screen displays the

process of ﬁnding the quotient and the memory, with

several animations of the numbers and text boxes on

the side explaining the thought process behind the op-

erations performed.

When the division process is complete the user

can see the quotient and the reminder that resulted

from the division process (see Figure 18).

ımp

art

irea Cu Rest

see the computatioms

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

6.6 The Compare the Numbers“”

Page

The game on this page is designed to help children

improve their comparison skills. The goal of the game

is to score as many points as possible by comparing

numbers correctly. The game concept is based on the

Whack A Mole game.

On the left side of the page, same as for the

SpeedTest game, the user can see a table with the high

scores for this game. There are two buttons avail-

able for the user: the “Instruct

iuni

” button and the

”Start” button. If the user clicks on the ﬁrst button,

the instructions for the game are displayed . To start

the game, the user must click on the ”Start” button.

Figure 19: Game playing.

The game consists of two numbers with an empty

box between them and several number comparison

signs (see Figure 19). After clicking the Play but-

ton, the player must correctly click the character with

the sign that deﬁnes the relationship between the two

numbers on the screen. After a character is clicked,

another equation is displayed, and so on until the

counter ends.

There are two possible outcomes: if the user had

all the answers correct, the score is doubled(see Fig-

ure 20). If there were some mistakes, the wrong com-

parisons are displayed on the screen along with the

right relational sign between them (see Figure 21).

At the end of the game, a ”Restart” button is also

displayed on the screen so that the user can play again.

7 RESULTS VALIDATION

After the application was ﬁnished we thought about

the best method to test and validate our application,

we needed a sample of possible “clients” for our ap-

compar

a Numerele

instuctions

Figure 20: No errors.

Figure 21: Computation errors.

plication and a method to see the impact that the ap-

plication would have in the educational domain, more

speciﬁcally, in the mathematics domain.

Because we needed to see how ﬁrst to forth

grade children would interact with the application we

thought that the best idea would be to test our appli-

cation inside of a school, given the fact that the appli-

cation is meant to be used at school, or, at home, in

order to practice the concepts learned in school.

We talked with a school from Alba Iulia, a city lo-

cated in the centre of Romania, the school is named

“Ion Ag

arbiceanu”. In this school we went to 4 dif-

ferent classes, a second grade, a fourth grade and two

third grade classes. In total around 80 children tested

the application.

8 THE PROCESS OF TESTING

THE APPLICATION WITH THE

PUPILS

For each of the four classes that took part in the ex-

periment, we divided the process in three phases. In

the ﬁrst phase, we would project the application on

the class projector and show the explanations to the

children while letting them provide the required in-

put. We would repeat this process a few times.

Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application MatematiX

In the second phase of the experiment, we used

two laptops. The children would go one at a time to

either laptop and test the games and the navigation

process from one page to another. We would super-

vise the children and help them if they got stuck in

the application.

In the last phase, the children had to answer ﬁve

questions about the application to describe their ex-

perience. The questions were asked by a human re-

sources student to ensure that the developer of the ap-

plication did not inﬂuence this process. We wanted

the children to understand our questions and provide

honest feedback, that’s why we decided it was best to

discuss with them, not just give them a questionnaire

to ﬁll out.

The questions that we used are the following:

• How much did you like the application (how it

looked, what activities could you do with it)

• Did you navigate easy from one web page to an-

other?

• What did you learn?

• What would you change/add to the application?

• What mathematical operation do you think is the

hardest? (this question was designed to get their

opinion on the current operations implemented in

the application and also to provide some future

insights, on other operations that could be ap-

proached)

During these three phases, we asked the teach-

ers to supervise the children and give their opinion

on how well the application treated the mathematical

subjects and what they thought about the children’s

interaction with the application.

8.1 Processing the Results and Drawing

Conclusions

At the end of the experiment, all the answers received

were introduced in an Excel document, and processed

further. The processing consisted of generalizing the

responses for instance if the answer was “I liked it a

lot” or “I found it very interesting” we classiﬁed them

as “I liked the application very much”. Or if there

were two answers “I learn how to compute faster”

and “I learned how to compute easier” we generalized

them to “I learn how to compute better”,

All the computations for the number of answers of

a certain kind, or, the percentage in which one kind of

answer was found in the responses, were done using

Excel formulas and graphs.

The answers to the ﬁrst question “How much did

you like the application” were classiﬁed in one of the

four categories for each grade: Very much, Much, Not

much, Not interested. After this, we generated a dia-

gram based on the answers (see Figure 22).

Figure 22: Diagram for the ﬁrst question.

For the ﬁrst 2 grades (second and third) almost all

the answers were in the “Very much” category. Some

of the fourth graders (15 %) were not interested in the

application but the rest of them said they liked it.

The answers to the second question, “Did you

navigate easy from one web page to another?” were

mostly positive (see Figure 23), 86% of the children

said that they did manage to navigate easily. These an-

swers did not need any processing because they were

only answers of: Yes, No, Kind of.

Figure 23: Diagram for the second question.

For the third question, “What did you learn”, the

children said that the application helped them make

computations faster, think faster and compare the

numbers more easily. Some of them said that they

managed to work better with mathematical operations

that were harder for them before.

Here we also divided the answers in some cate-

gories and counted them, in order to determine what

was the main subject that the application has helped

the children with.

When asked what they would change or add to the

application, half of the children said that they would

not change anything, the majority of the remaining

ones provided pretty interesting ideas that really could

be implemented in the future, even ideas for new

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

100

games. Some of them wanted more games or more

time for some of the games or did not like something

about the interface.

For this question, we counted the answers that said

that they wanted no change. After that, we analysed

the rest of the answers to conclude the main issues of

the application and the improvements that should be

made.

Processing the answers to the last question was

pretty straightforward, we divided the answers into

four different categories: Division, Comparisons of

numbers, Operations with parenthesis, Multiplica-

tion, Subtraction, None. After that, we counted for

each grade the instances of each type of answer and

the generated diagrams based on them.

Figure 24: Hardest operation for second grade children.

The hardest operations were: Division for second

(see Figure 24) and third grade (see Figure 25) and

no operation for the fourth grade. This answer was as

expected, we chose to implement games and explana-

tions for the division because of the level of difﬁculty

the children usually think this operation has. Also it is

only taught in third grade so it was expected that the

second and third graders will ﬁnd it hard.

Figure 25: Hardest operation for third grade children.

9 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK DIRECTIONS

This paper aimed to determine whether online plat-

forms can be used as a learning environment for

Mathematics and to develop o method of using the

technology for the learning process’s theoretical and

practical aspects.

In the ﬁrst part of the paper, we focused on the

current learning environment, and a deﬁnition for the

active learning strategy was provided. Going forward,

we described how this strategy can be implemented

and used with the help of technology. We also pre-

sented some existing solutions today.

The second part of the paper focused on ﬁnding

the best technologies for implementing an application

that would best suit our needs. Then we presented

the features and the implementation of Matematix, an

application with games and visual explanations de-

signed to help elementary school children in the pro-

cess of learning maths.

In the last part of this paper, we focused on test-

ing the solution we developed and processing the ob-

tained results.

During the testing phase, the children said they

wanted more games of this kind, they were eager to

play the games and wanted to play again after they

tried them. This means that this kind of application

could also provide an alternative to the amount of time

that children spend using the internet to access other

resources that are not beneﬁcial for them.

Another aspect worth mentioning is that the teach-

ers were also excited about the application and con-

sidered it a very good way of practising mathematics.

This means that most of the parents that maybe would

refuse the application at ﬁrst, could be encouraged to

accept it because the teachers can tell them about how

it helps the children’s learning process.

In conclusion, because of the mainly positive re-

sponses received while testing the application, we can

say that our approach can be a very efﬁcient method

for helping children practice math and there are more

unexplored resources and other useful methods of im-

plementing active learning strategies that could be

used in the academic environment.

Similar to any other product, our application can

continuously undergo improvements. There are cer-

tain aspects that could be enhanced and expanded

upon, such as the explanation of the division. To make

the games more engaging and difﬁcult for the chil-

dren, they could have more than one level.

Also, there are a lot more mathematical subjects

that could be used as a base for the implementation of

other games or explanations. The application could be

extended for more mature children or even for other

teaching subjects like History, English, Geography,

among others.

A feature that could be implemented in order to

help the teachers understand what part of a particu-

Interactive Math Explorations Using the Game-Based Application MatematiX

101

lar subject is troublesome for the children, would be

the reports generated based on the child’s activity and

game scores. If the teacher could have an overview

inside the application of the progress of each child,

and the mistakes they make, as well as some statis-

tics provided by the application on the general level

of knowledge of children in a class, they would un-

derstand better how they need to approach each topic,

and what to insist on.

REFERENCES

Anwar, N., Kristiadi, D. P., Novezar, F. A., Tanto, P. A.,

Septha, K., Ardhia, P., Evan, K., Chrysler, A.,

Warnars, H., and Abraham, J. (2020). Learning math

through mobile game for primary school students. Syl-

wan, 164(5):346–352.

Ariansyah, R. M. and Suprianto, S. The early recognition of

mathematical thinking processes for early childhood

based on educational games: Pengenalan secara dini

proses berpikir matematika bagi anak usia dini berba-

sis game edukatif.

Asprilia, M. T., Qodariah, L., and Purba, F. D. (2020). First

grader’s attention span during in-class activity. Jurnal

Ilmu Pendidikan, Psikologi, Bimbingan dan Konsel-

ing, 10(2):144–150.

Bengtson, J. (2013). What is html5 and what do you need

to know about it? Journal of Hospital Librarianship.

Bonwell, C. D. and Eison, J. (1991). Active Learning: Cre-

ating Excitement in the Classroom. PhD thesis, The

George Washington University, School of Education

and Human Development, Washington, D.C.

Capek, P., Kral, E., and Senkerik, R. (2015a). Towards an

empirical analysis of .net framework and c# language

features’ adoption.

Capek, P., Kral, E., and Senkerik, R. (2015b). Towards an

empirical analysis of .net framework and c# language

features’ adoption. In 2015 International Conference

on Computational Science and Computational Intelli-

gence (CSCI).

Chang, K.-E., Wu, L.-J., Weng, S.-E., and Sung, Y.-

T. (2012). Embedding game-based problem-solving

phase into problem-posing system for mathematics

learning. Computers & Education.

Conrad, J. (2018). Active learning.

Diana Oblinger, E., Oblinger, J., Roberts, G., McNeely, B.,

Windham, C., Hartman, J., Moskal, P., Dziuban, C.,

and Kvavik, R. (2005). Educating the net generation,

volume 272. Brockport Bookshelf, Book.

Durango, A. and Academy, I. (2015). Dise

no Web con CSS:

2ª Edici

on. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Plat-

form.

Edelhauser, E. and Lupu-Dima, L. (2021). One year of

online education in covid-19 age, a challenge for the

romanian education system. International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(15).

Fridolin Sze Thou Ting, W. H. L. and Shroff, R. H.

(2016). Active learning via problem-based collabo-

rative games in a large mathematics university course

in hong kong.

Hyun, J., Ediger, R., and Lee, D. (2017). Students’ sat-

isfaction on their learning process in active learn-

ing and traditional classrooms. International Jour-

nal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education,

29(1):108–118.

Kebritchi, M., Hirumi, A., and Bai, H. (2010). The effects

of modern mathematics computer games on mathe-

matics achievement and class motivation. Computers

& Education.

Liu, X. (2019). Functions Fun: An iPad Educational Game

for Teaching Mathematical Functions and Graphs.

PhD thesis, Virginia Tech.

Marius, P. F. (2018). Invatamantul din romania in perioada

1919-2017.

Newton, D. (2011). Teaching for Understanding: What it

is and how to Do it. Online access with subscription:

Proquest Ebook Central. Taylor & Francis.

Papert, S. A. (2020). Mindstorms: Children, computers,

and powerful ideas. Basic books.

Parikh, S., Dhar, M. S., and Edu-Tech, B. S. Making math-

ematics fun.

Pho, A. and Dinscore, A. (2016). The beneﬁt of game based

learning.

Sardone, N. B. and Devlin-Scherer, R. (2016). Let the

(board) games begin: Creative ways to enhance teach-

ing and learning. The Clearing House: A Journal of

Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 89(6):215–

222.

Snow, E. L., Jackson, G. T., and Varner, L. K. (2013).

”expectations of technology: A factor to consider in

game-based learning environments”.

Yoon, H. S. (2014). Can i play with you? the intersection

of play and writing in a kindergarten classroom. Con-

temporary Issues in Early Childhood.

uteu, L., Cristea, M., Ciascai, L., et al. (2021). Reﬂec-

tive teaching and metacognition in romanian teachers’

practice. a conceptual delimitation. European Pro-

ceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 104.

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

102