Below is a collection of some of the work I completed while completing my Master's degree at Michigan State University. Due to the flexibility of the program, I was able to pursue and grow my own interests. The purpose of this showcase is to demonstrate how my goals have gained a focus over time, and to display my rigorous study into each of the three major components of my goal: Serious Game Design, Math Education, and Adaptive Machine Learning.
My work is sorted into three major corresponding categories. The first category displays my work in Serious Game Design and User Experience. The second category focuses on my philosophies of teaching and how I believe learning and education must be transformed. Finally, the third category gains technical depth as it explores some of the logic and research that goes into building an Intelligent Tutoring System.
To view each of my projects, simply click on the title to the left of each description. Enjoy!
This is a proposed multiplication game which focuses entirely on what multiplication is and how it addresses so many issues in how students are taught in schools today. Rather than relying on memorization, which is what many students are expected to do today (remember the dreaded times tables?) this game focuses on building number sense, visual models, spatial reasoning skills, and self-regulated learning.
This paper proposes a specific game, and also examines existing multiplication games for comparison. In addition, a plan is created for designing and testing the game, including what materials are needed and how long the project would be expected to take.
In this short user observation, I observed three math educators search online for math games. I took notes to determine what types of games they would use in their own classrooms, and I also offered several games for them to look at and discuss. The user observations were done remotely over Skype such that they could share their screen with me as I watched. At the end of the report is a section of informed recommendations for game designers looking to create math games to be used in classrooms.
In this paper, I collected and analyzed data accessible from the Google Play Store. I found math games with a high number of downloads and examined various characteristics in an attempt to determine what features can help a math game on an app store get more downloads. Similar to the User Observation, this paper ends with recommendations for game designers and marketers for how to increase downloads on the Google Play Store.
This presentation explains how I created a simple puzzle game using MIT's Gameblox platform for rapid prototyping and rapid game development. Once the puzzle game was created, I performed a user test on three different users to determine two things: Is the game intuitive? And does the game promote various problem solving strategies, such as learning from mistakes? At the end of the presentation, a simple list of characteristics are provided which can be used to guide the next iteration of the game development process.
In this group project, we came up with three wicked questions which might lead to some intuition on what rethinking teaching means, and how to answer that question. The three questions we came up with were: 1) How do we prepare teachers to be effective in today's classrooms? 2) How do we keep education relevant/engaging to students? 3) How do we assess/evaluate teachers and students in a way that is fair and encourages growth?
After that, I collected 67 survey responses from various math teachers from all over the world and compiled them to gain some insight on how to answer those three main questions. Afterwards, I created a large infographic which summarized my findings.
This essay describes how "less is more" when it comes to teaching a class. Specifically, I discuss the advantages to standing in front of the classroom less, and I encourage projects and group work such that students build knowledge together (social constructivism). Similar to the project above, I created a simple infographic which discusses why teaching less might encourage students to construct their own learning.
In this essay, I question some of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics, explaining that they promote memorization over problem-solving and critical thinking. In addition, I uncover research that explains how many (more than half!) teachers and college professors believe that the Common Core State Standards are not providing students with the necessary college readiness they need. I also quickly explain what skills are needed in order to be the most college-ready.
In this short essay, I define and explain what an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is. I analyze two different articles on ITS and explain their research and findings. The first article is a meta analysis of studies, which compares different tutoring systems against one another. Human-based one-on-one tutoring, computer-based tutoring, and no tutoring are all compared, and several insights are developed regarding what the ideal goal of a tutor should be.
The second article examines the role of feedback in an ITS and how the feedback relates to increased transfer performance and motivation in students. The researchers in the second article tested various feedback mechanisms (when to provide feedback, how often to provide feedback, and the quality of the feedback).
In this longer, more technical paper, I explore how an Intelligent Tutoring System works and what data is necessary to collect from students in order to build an accurate ITS. I also explain how an ITS can greatly benefit education, as it allows educators to reach many more students than what a classroom teacher would normally be able to reach.