Success Stories out of the Institute of Education Sciences' SBIR Program: MidSchoolMath's EMPIRES
Product: EMPIRES is a collaborative blended online and in-person game for students in middle school to learn standards-aligned mathematics within an engaging context. The game follows a storyline in a recreation of the empire of Ancient Mesopotamia, which is at the brink of agricultural revolution and of becoming a trade economy. As students play the game, they engage in math-focused activities to drive the action, such as taxing citizens to learn ratios and proportions, allocating resources to learn percentages, and measuring the distance and time between a neighboring empire by applying the principles of the Pythagorean Theorem. Students create buildings, herd sheep, practice medicine, and tend to the needs of the people using math in everyday life. As a socially networked game, students interact to complete trades while engaging different math problems. Helpful and funny virtual advisors scaffold students learning through mathematical discourse, arguing over the next most important thing to do. The game design architecture works on a wide range of computers, including desktops and iPads. A teacher's guide and companion website support implementation. The intervention can be used for fully in-class, fully remote, or in hybrid teaching and learning situations for grade 7 classrooms. Lastly, the core technology and simulations developed for EMPIRES are also used across other interventions delivered by MidSchoolMath.
Research and Development: Initially a paper-based version of the intervention was developed and used in classrooms. Building from this, the technology-delivered version of EMPIRES was iteratively designed by experts with backgrounds in mathematics teaching and learning game and software development, and with regular feedback from teachers and students.
Research during five different pilot implementations with 12 teachers and nearly 800 students demonstrated usability and feasibility. EMPIRES consistently functioned across operating systems and devices, and all teachers reported being able to successfully integrate the lessons within classroom practice to replace or supplement the existing curricula. Students also reported higher levels of engagement. A re-enrollment rate of nearly 90% from year to year and feedback from EMPIRES users across schools and classrooms also support that EMPIRES can be successfully implemented at scale. During COVID-19, all 240 teachers who used EMPIRES reported that the program functioned while instruction occurred at a distance.
Two randomized controlled studies were conducted to test the promise of EMPIRES for supporting mathematics learning. In a study with 435 grade 6 students, students who used EMPIRES technology with a simulator model increased significantly from pre- to post-test on items measuring proportional relationships compared to students in classrooms that used business-as-usual curricula. In another randomized controlled study with four grade 7 classrooms and 265 students, where half of the classes used EMPIRES plus scaffolding (with no formal teacher instruction) and half used business-as-usual procedures, the performance of students using EMPIRES increased significantly from pre- to post-test on items measuring calculating the volume of cylinders compared to students in the control group.
Commercialization: Launched in 2016, the EMPIRES game and its core technology have been used by thousands of teachers in over 180 schools and 40,000 students. In spring 2020, EMPIRES and its core technologies and simulations were used by 240 teachers to support distance learning. For the 2020-2021 school year, MidSchoolMath has entered into contracts with several large school districts. MidSchoolMath's commercialization strategy focuses on direct sales to districts and schools through annual and multi-year licenses. MidSchoolMath products are also featured at the annual MidSchoolMath National Conference.
Industry Awards for Innovation:
Related IES SBIR Awards
(Phase I & II), $1,050,000
2012 Phase I, $150,000;
2014 Phase II, $900,000
Key Project Information:
Location: Taos, NM
Website: http://midschoolmath.com/
Video Demo: https://vimeo.com/120964956
Contact: Scott Laidlaw, scott@midschoolmath.com
