Legend Lost: Exploring Mathematical Concepts Through Gaming

Indianapolis, IN

Video games are an ever-growing interest for children; however, many video games simply provide entertainment without being designed to provide educational opportunities. Overall, this project combines the video game, Legends Lost, and the Indiana 5th and 6th grade math standards to deliver a gamified learning experience for students. Players follow a storyline where they are challenged to design and compete in medieval tournaments to become a Knight of the Round Table. Each event is based on one of the Indiana state math standards. Specifically, events include finding the area of shapes, discovering specific lengths on number lines, pattern recognition, using decimals and fractions, and quickly solving math problems using standard operations. After completing all five mini-games (i.e. events) players advance to the championship round, which combines all of the state standards utilized (the player uses all of the standards to defeat an adversary and become a Knight of the Round Table). This project, and specifically this series of challenges, aims to build the students' mathematical knowledge within a gamified environment. We expect that providing students with an opportunity to practice math and problem-solving skills using an educational game will prove motivational.