Work in Progress: Gaming Our Way to Increased Math Self-efficacy and Opening the Gate to STEM Majors

When a prospective student looks at undergraduate degrees to pursue, they have spent twelve years in the academic setting and have internalized their strengths and weaknesses.Where some might have dreamed of becoming an astronaut, scientist, or architect when they grew up, their academic experience disassociated those dreams from their reality.Some students have identified themselves as being able to be successful, but many still struggles.In STEM degrees, mathematics is a major stumbling block for many students.How many leave their dreams behind and skip over STEM degrees, because they have instilled in their identity their inability to be successful with math?How many students attempt to overcome their mathematical challenges and pursue a STEM degree, but cannot jump the hurdle of math and fail or withdraw?Can game-based learning in applied mathematical training scenarios make a difference?This work in progress is creating a pilot online game-based learning experience for construction students to work through their trepidations of Pre-Calculus that has resulted in a 45-60% DFW rate (the percentage of students who enrolled in the course but earned a D, failed, or withdrew) of students not only in the construction program, but across our campus.While the impact of this research will certainly address the existing dismal 45-60% DFW rate of Pre-Calculus across our campus that needs to be rectified, it is designed with scalability in mind.This project will create varied animation scenarios for students to experience real life situations where they would apply mathematics.Repeated online gaming experiences are expected to address the self-confidence and math self-efficacy of students by exposing them to situations where they would apply mathematics, but in a low-risk environment.This approach takes math out of the conceptual state to an applied form that may address the different learning styles of our diverse student population.This project is intended to be transferable to different locations, disciplines, and could include varied scenarios to be culturally relevant in many settings.This paper shares the current status of these modeled scenarios.