(350c) Gamification of Quantitative Problems to Increase Student Engagement

A web-based game, QRGames, involving quantitative problems that is cooperative within groups and competitive between groups has been developed. Students are exposed to conceptual, quantitative and judgement decisions in an environment which provides an engaging and relevant context.

In one form of the game, the context is a chemical production facility and teams are trying to maximize the health of this facility. The first phase involves conceptual or scaffolding questions in a traditional online gaming platform such as Kahoot, Gimkit or Quizziz. In the second phase, student receive additional points by solving multipart, quantitative, computer graded problems where each student receives a different version of the same problem. Student are encouraged to help teammates and are penalized if too much discrepancy in progress on the problem develops within a team. The progress of the teams and team members are displayed on a scoreboard.

In the final phase, the team decides the best way to spend the combined points to maximize the health of their production facility. For example, should the points be spent on an emergency shutdown system, upgrade the aging steam boilers, or fund research and development? Each purchasing decision can change the financial, environmental, and societal health of the facility. How these factors are weighted to sum to the team’s final score is determined by the political environment that is finally and somewhat randomly selected.

Educational benefits include conceptual and scaffolding questions and peer to peer instruction on questions that are relevant to the game context. Additionally, student experience business type decisions with limited resources and tradeoffs between the financial, environmental, and societal health of an organization within an uncertain environment. Individual participation and contribution as well as team cooperation are incentivized. The game can be used as an effective review, an extracurricular activity, or a break from the normal routine of a class.