OC tests computer game-based program to teach math

Computer games plus math equals what a UC Irvine professor and Orange County education officials plan to study in the coming years. KPCC's Susan Valot explains.

Susan Valot: A UCI professor, the Orange County Department of Education and the non-profit MIND Research Institute in Santa Ana have nabbed a $3 million grant. They'll use it over the next four years to study a computer game-based math program in 50 Orange County schools that rank the lowest in math. The MIND Research Institute's Andrew Coulson says the idea is that kids are good at understanding concepts through pictures and objects.

Andrew Coulson: Let's use visualization of mathematics and not just the obvious things like triangles and squares and the like. But actually we can describe all of mathematics in a visual way and then have the kids use these visual reasoning abilities to learn the math. Once they understand it visually, then we're going to add in the language and the abstract symbols.

Valot: Coulson says the program takes language out of the equation. That could also help students whose native language is not English. Computer math games have been around for a while. But this is the largest, most comprehensive study of how well the technique works.