ProjectProposal-MohammedAli
From CS 160 Fall 2008
Contents |
Target User Group
The target user group would students from later elementary school to high school. The game would target those students who have trouble understanding mathematical utility in everyday life.
Problem Description
Students often lack the motivation of learning math. They often shy away from learning math because they simply find it to be useless in everyday life. The problem case here is to provide a means to help students understand how and when math skills can be useful to everyday situations.
Problem Context and Forces
The level of mathematical ability in high school graduates are seeming to decline in the US. This can be traced to the lack of motivation for US students to use math in their particular choice of careers and their personal lives. Math is important in many professions from business to engineering. People who are well versed in math can learn to make important decisions in life and everyday activities including, shopping wisely, making financial decisions and budgeting. There are a large amount of math games out there to help students with a particular skill in math. However, those games still lack that motivational drive that students need to make the effort to learn that particular skill. Games used to increase mathematical motivation is not so popular.
Solution Sketch
The type of game that I propose is a sort of RPG (Role Playing Game). In this game, a player takes on the role of that of a whiz kid that goes around solving problems in a world of perplexed characters who need the whiz kid to help them solve their everyday problems. The whiz kid can help these characters while increasing his popularity points. These popularity points can be used to increase the players rank in society so that the player can progress along his chosen career and personal path. The player career and personal choice would effect the types of math questions asked and the difficulty of the math question would increase as the player's rank increases in the society.
Mathematical Areas
The focus of the game is to help players gain motivation to learn math, so the bulk of math questions will be based on simple real world problems. Areas covered will include:
- Basic Math (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division)
- Fractions, decimals, and percents
- Graphs
- Word Problems
- Logic Problems
- Systems of Equations
- General Algebra
Roles
Roles can be designed to appeal to the players interest. As the player progress with his popularity points, his/her choice of roles changes. Roles can range from:
- Student
- Store Clerk
- Business Owner
- Teacher/Professor
- Mayor
Characters & Location
This game can include levels in all sorts of fun scenarios for young children including forests, cities, hospitals, schools, and even deserts. The whiz kid can help an array of characters and people belonging to everyday professions such as
- Teachers
- Policemen
- Fireman
- Farmers
- Students
- Mechanics
- etc
