Research News

Playful Learning: Fluency Games and BrainPOP

Posted by jglassman on

At BrainPOP, we understand that computational fluency–the ability to re-create pathways in the brain, and then strengthen these connections through repetition and feedback–is essential to attaining higher-order math skills.  

Recognizing the critical role fluency plays in math, we dug into our data and conducted research on the impact some of our math games have on users’ computational fluency. Two of our games in particular–Addition Blocks and Multiplication Blocks–were developed  by teacher Marty Esterman, founder of Fluency Games and expert in pedagogy of math fluency.

In partnership with Fluency Games, we gathered and analyzed data (in a privacy compliant manner, of course!) and discovered that success playing Addition Blocks and Multiplication Blocks was a good indicator of success with traditional, non-game measures of assessment, such as BrainPOP’s multiple choice quizzes. Click to read the full report, Playful Learning: Fluency Games and BrainPOP.

Our research also revealed, not surprisingly, that BrainPOP’s GameUp is a popular destination for students. While we encourage students (and teachers) to begin exploring a subject from its topic page,another strategy is to start with a game to pique student interest before diving deeply into the content. For game play to be effective though, fluency is essential.

In our ongoing effort to  motivate and engage your students, we are committed to conducting research on relevant and timely topics, such as computational fluency. Using research results, our goal is to continuously improve and develop our content and tools so that they are most effective for learning and complement each other.  We’ll continue to share our research findings with you and we are always eager for your feedback, including what you’d like to know more about.