Teachley: Math Facts - Design And Development Of Intervention Software Promoting Single-Digit Operational Fluency

During the IES Phase I project, the team developed a prototype of a single digit addition game, following an iterative process incorporating feedback from teachers and students having difficulty with math. Nineteen students participated in a pilot study, and the researchers found that the prototype functioned well and that users were engaged by the game. In this Phase II project, the team built and refined the back-end system, designed and developed the teacher website, and created content for games in subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Teachley is a series of apps for touch-screen tablet computers to support math learning for first- to fourth-grade students with learning difficulties. In the game, students learn content through mini-lessons, engage with problems in practice and speed rounds, and then receive formative feedback on their performance. Students use and manipulate blocks, linker tubes, number lines, and interact with engaging pedagogical agents such as parrots and sloths. Students set goals, advance to more challenging levels, and engage in competition. The game is self-paced and provides individualized formative assessment scaffolding when students do not know the answer to a question. A teacher management system supports professional development and produces reports to guide instruction. The intended outcomes from gameplay include increased fluency, conceptual understanding, strategy awareness, self-assessment, and motivation of basic math.

After the teams completed development of Teachley, they conducted a randomized control trial with 83 students in grades 1 to 4, with 42 playing Teachley: Operations games and 41 using different math apps over a period of several weeks.