A classroom study: electronic games engage children as researchers

This paper describes the authors' experiences in using classroom play of electronic games as a central component of a collaborative approach to mathematics learning in a grade four classroom. The authors form one of the pairings (computer scientist, elementary teacher) of university researchers with teachers, in the E-GEMS classroom study, an ongoing long-term qualitative study on the potential uses of electronic games and activities for enhancing mathematics learning in intermediate grade classrooms. We believe the experiences from this study can provide insight on issues of importance to research on computer-supported collaborative learning in the classroom and to mathematics education. Our experiences echo those of many others on the effectiveness of collaborative use of computers, where the collaboration occurs through small groups of learners working at each computer. We also note the positive impact of connecting the computer activities with related large and small group classroom activities. We are excited by the success of these approaches in stimulating students to talk and write about mathematical concepts, and to view themselves as researchers exploring mathematical ideas. Finally, our experiences reinforce the need to reexamine user-interfaces and other areas in human-computer interaction in the context of computer-supported learning. A more detailed version of this paper is available from the authors.