The Ottmar Project

From Here to There

The primary aim of this project is to test the efficacy of a theoretically and empirically grounded, integrated classroom technology intervention (From Here to There; FH2T), which aligns attention, gesture, and physicality. This technology system aligns student gestures, actions, and mathematics procedures naturally, by making instructional gestures a primary mechanism by which mathematical transformations are achieved, naturally guiding student attention to appropriate aspects of mathematical situations.

The fundamental perspective guiding this work is that solving algebra problems is fundamentally a rewarding and playful challenge, and that the role of ‘gamifications’ implemented in an application should be to provide access to the playful challenges of algebra. Rather than asking users to simplify an expression or to solve an equation, users are asked to transform the expression to a state that matches a goal. Each problem starts with an equation or expression and states an end goal state: the student's’ goal is to transform the expression from the starting form (here) to the ending state (there) (Figure 1). In order to achieve their goal, students perform a series of dynamic interactions, including decomposing numbers (8=5+3 or 11-3), combining terms, applying operations to both sides of an equation, and rearranging terms through commutative, associative, and distributive properties. For example, one might have the goal of turning 9-2x+5=4 into 5+9=4+2x. One could accomplish this by moving the ‘- 2x’ term to the right of the equation (inverting its sign as needed), and then touching the 5 and dragging it to the left of the 9.