Board 307: Improving STEM Student Fundamental Math Skills with Tailored Game-Based Instruction

Monika Neda; Blanca Rincon; Alok Pandey; Claudia Mora Bornholdt; Vanessa W. Vongkulluksn; Rachidi Salako; John William Howard; Daniel Sahl

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Tagged Topics: Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 5
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--46885
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46885
Download Count: 12

Paper Authors

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Monika Neda University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Monika Neda is a Professor in Department of Mathematical Sciences at University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) and the Associate Dean for Research in College of Sciences at UNLV. Monika received her Ph.D. in mathematics at University of Pittsburgh and her expertise is in computational fluid dynamics with recent years involvement in STEM education. In addition to research, she is involved in several programs helping women and underrepresented students in their journey in STEM disciplines.

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Dr. Vongkulluksn is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Psychology program at University of Nevada Las Vegas. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California. Her research examines student engagement as situated in specific learning contexts. She specializes in cognitive engagement in STEM learning, particularly in technology-integrated learning environments and for traditionally underserved students.

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Rachidi Salako University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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John William Howard College of Southern Nevada

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Daniel Sahl University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Abstract

This research focuses on intervention for mathematics remediation for all engineering and computer sciences majors at University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) and College of Southern Nevada (CSN) STEM students (pre-engineering and pre-science) at CSN. During the 2020-2021 academic year within a Southwest School District, source of the vast majority of undergraduate students entering UNLV and CSN, only 21% of high school students were proficient in math. These numbers were exacerbated for Latinx students who are overrepresented at Title I schools with less access to experienced math teachers and advanced math course offerings. To mitigate the math under-preparation issue, UNLV and CSN created math deficiency mitigation approaches as early as 1996. All engineering degrees at UNLV require three calculus courses, differential equations, and statistics. Most incoming freshmen entering sciences or engineering at both institutions are placed in algebra, geometry, or pre-calculus. Engineering and computer science majors require calculus I (Math 181) as the first math course in the curriculum. Unfortunately, very few incoming freshmen meet this requirement and students aspiring engineering and sciences have to spend, on average, 1.5-2.0 years on math deficiency prior to enrolling in Calculus I. Since fall 2021, a co-requisite model has been adopted at CSN and UNLV to attempt to mitigate the math deficiency of incoming students. In the co-requisite model, students aspiring engineering and science, who are not math ready, are placed in Math 126E precalculus with the co-requisite 26B. Current literature review of innovations and interventions that intend to improve the outcomes in mathematics points to active learning, hands-on projects, comic book-like interventions, mentoring programs, use of technology, one-to-one help, and peer study groups, as potential remediation tools. The literature also reveals that the most successful methods directly address real math skill deficits. The research reported here focuses on developing Math Masters (M&M) games, in collaboration with the UNLV Center of Game Innovation. The game design process follows an iterative approach, with scholars in mathematics, STEM education, and educational psychology collaborating with gaming innovation designers to identify opportunities to combine critical math concepts with a complimentary game structure and design. The games supplement the current co-requisite model used by UNLV and CSN for precalculus math focusing on basic arithmetic operations, functions (such as linear, quadratic, square root, and inverse), log and exponential modeling and system of equations. The game developed to teach arithmetic operations will be presented in this paper. It was developed to decompose math concepts into individual knowledge components that can be intervened upon; it promotes student motivation and reduce psychosocial barriers through personally- and culturally-relevant pedagogy, leading to increased engagement and math achievement. The research includes formative evaluation for the improvement of the games. We integrate a range of measurement strategies in our project to assess how M&M is able to reach satisfactory outcomes on students’ math knowledge, math-related motivation, academic achievement, and engineering major persistence. These strategies include quantitative and qualitative approaches to inform the refinement of M&M and triangulate its efficacy. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Grant # 2225226

Citation
Format

Neda, M., & Rincon, B., & Pandey, A., & Mora Bornholdt, C., & Vongkulluksn, V. W., & Salako, R., & Howard, J. W., & Sahl, D. (2024, June), Board 307: Improving STEM Student Fundamental Math Skills with Tailored Game-Based Instruction Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46885

TY - CPAPER
AB - This research focuses on intervention for mathematics remediation for all engineering and computer sciences majors at University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) and College of Southern Nevada (CSN) STEM students (pre-engineering and pre-science) at CSN. During the 2020-2021 academic year within a Southwest School District, source of the vast majority of undergraduate students entering UNLV and CSN, only 21% of high school students were proficient in math. These numbers were exacerbated for Latinx students who are overrepresented at Title I schools with less access to experienced math teachers and advanced math course offerings. To mitigate the math under-preparation issue, UNLV and CSN created math deficiency mitigation approaches as early as 1996. All engineering degrees at UNLV require three calculus courses, differential equations, and statistics. Most incoming freshmen entering sciences or engineering at both institutions are placed in algebra, geometry, or pre-calculus. Engineering and computer science majors require calculus I (Math 181) as the first math course in the curriculum. Unfortunately, very few incoming freshmen meet this requirement and students aspiring engineering and sciences have to spend, on average, 1.5-2.0 years on math deficiency prior to enrolling in Calculus I. Since fall 2021, a co-requisite model has been adopted at CSN and UNLV to attempt to mitigate the math deficiency of incoming students. In the co-requisite model, students aspiring engineering and science, who are not math ready, are placed in Math 126E precalculus with the co-requisite 26B. Current literature review of innovations and interventions that intend to improve the outcomes in mathematics points to active learning, hands-on projects, comic book-like interventions, mentoring programs, use of technology, one-to-one help, and peer study groups, as potential remediation tools. The literature also reveals that the most successful methods directly address real math skill deficits. The research reported here focuses on developing Math Masters (M&M) games, in collaboration with the UNLV Center of Game Innovation. The game design process follows an iterative approach, with scholars in mathematics, STEM education, and educational psychology collaborating with gaming innovation designers to identify opportunities to combine critical math concepts with a complimentary game structure and design. The games supplement the current co-requisite model used by UNLV and CSN for precalculus math focusing on basic arithmetic operations, functions (such as linear, quadratic, square root, and inverse), log and exponential modeling and system of equations. The game developed to teach arithmetic operations will be presented in this paper. It was developed to decompose math concepts into individual knowledge components that can be intervened upon; it promotes student motivation and reduce psychosocial barriers through personally- and culturally-relevant pedagogy, leading to increased engagement and math achievement. The research includes formative evaluation for the improvement of the games. We integrate a range of measurement strategies in our project to assess how M&M is able to reach satisfactory outcomes on students’ math knowledge, math-related motivation, academic achievement, and engineering major persistence. These strategies include quantitative and qualitative approaches to inform the refinement of M&M and triangulate its efficacy.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Grant # 2225226

AU - Monika Neda
AU - Blanca Rincon
AU - Alok Pandey
AU - Claudia Mora Bornholdt
AU - Vanessa W. Vongkulluksn Ph.D.
AU - Rachidi Salako
AU - John William Howard
AU - Daniel Sahl
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Board 307: Improving STEM Student Fundamental Math Skills with Tailored Game-Based Instruction
UR - https://peer.asee.org/46885
DO - 10.18260/1-2--46885
ER -