McDougal Littell

Project: Review games for Geometry textbook

Overview: How do you make sure students actually do those end of chapter review? You make it a game... literally. In early 2002, McDougal Littell gave us a challenge. Make the geometry review process fun. Brella was asked to create 11 unique games, one for each chapter of their Geometry textbook, which would test student's knowledge of that chapter's content.

Unique Challenges: The games needed to be entertaining enough to make the review process fun, but limited enough so that it wouldn't interfere with learning. Other concerns were that it needed to appeal to a broad range of ethnicites and to both sexes.

Process: After dusting off our knowledge of Geometry the team began a two-week brainstorming process. We dug up our favorite arcade games. We researched game websites. We played a lot of games (tough job). The end result was about 20-30 different game ideas. From there we narrowed the focus with McDougal Littell. Some game were too violent, others required 3D graphics, which would blow the budget. Finally we came up with our 11 and began outlining the finalists, designing game play and coming up with the visual look of each. At each benchmark we reviewed with the client whether we were keeping on tract with the project goals. The team also continually assessed the "fun" factor, by bringing in numerous testers (again, tough job).

Results: The final result were eleven fun, relatively non-violent games, which asked students to solve up to 40 review questions each. The average student would stay engaged for anywhere from 20-60 minutes depending on a combination of mathematical and game playing skills. We're still collecting information on the ROI, but so far the client has received very positive feedback on the games, which is going into classroom usage during the 2002-2003 school year.

Click on an image below to play sample games.