CNME a math narrative-based serious game

Abstract

The teaching method has varied and evolved over the years. The year 2020 is a milestone in this variability. The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed the strict need for a radical adaptation of teaching processes that, worldwide, become exclusively or almost exclusively at a distance. The impact of the digital world on our lives has been and is being felt like never before. Non-formal teaching processes gain crucial importance in this scenario. Serious games are engaging and provide a stimulating environment in which students can explore and discover in a fun and interactive way, improving student’s motivation and performance in mathematics and making them active learners. The adoption in the educational process of serious games, promoting the development of critical thinking, and its interest, as a research topic, by scientists from various areas, namely, mathematics, have gained increasing prominence. With regard to mathematics, despite its recognized importance in the intellectual human development, children and adolescents usually believe that it is a difficult subject, both at a conceptual and procedural level, leading to a lack of motivation and high failure rates.

In this paper, based on a solid and recent literature review, we look at the role that serious games play in the learning and motivation of children and adolescents, especially the narrative educational games focused on mathematics. A narrative interactive serious game is defined as a serious game, in which the story exists to improve the gameplay. Within this context, the Thematic Line Geometrix of the Center for Research and Development of Mathematics and Applications (CIDMA) of the University of Aveiro developed the narrative serious game CNME based on the historical event “The Magellan - Elcano circumnavigation around the world”. This game runs on every platform that has a recent browser and it also has an application for Android and iOS. In the CNME digital and interactive game there are two game modes, the generic and the academic mode, depending on the player's profile. The generic modality was designed to promote mathematical literacy and is aimed at any citizen. The academic modality was designed to promote critical and creative thinking and is aimed at young people with mathematical knowledge at the level of the 3rd Cycle of the Portuguese Basic Education. In short, CNME is an interactive mathematical narrative game, aiming at mathematical learning in an interactive, playful and motivating way, anchored in a notable and true historical event conceived under a set of scrutinized scientific evidence.