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Educational Math Game for Stimulation of Children with Dyscalculia

Chapter  in  Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing · January 2018

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-73450-7_58

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 Educational Math Game for Stimulation
of Children with Dyscalculia

Pablo Torres-Carrión(&), Christian Sarmiento-Guerrero,

Juan Carlos Torres-Diaz, and Luis Barba-Guamán

Computer Science Department, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja,

San Cayetano, 11 01 608 Loja, Ecuador
{pvtorres,cfsarmiento,jctorres,lrbarba}@utpl.edu.ec

Abstract. Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder, reflected in an arithmetic AQ1

capacity below the expected on individuals of similar chronological age, IQ and
schooling. In order to improve these abilities, several studies agree that didactic
strategies with play activities help to improve the difficulties of learning to
count, to do basic mathematical calculations, to define groups of objects and in
spatial thinking. From this context, the objective is to develop an educational
game for children suffering from dyscalculia, available to the public on the
Arcade and Android platforms. For development, the agile XP methodology is
applied, in addition to GameSalad Creator and Viewer, OpenProj, Adobe
Photoshop CS2, Voice Record Pro, and C++ as the base programming lan-
guage. The application has been submitted for validation in institutions of initial
and primary education. AQ2

Keywords: Dyscalculia
Educational games
Inclusive education

Mathematics teaching
Gamification

1 Introduction

The educational game improves teaching and learning as well the student motivation in
classes [1]; it has been demonstrated that in educational environments, game platforms
complemented with digital didactic strategies improves the memory of objects and
images, decrease response times and increase the visomotor cognitive abilities [2]; also
improves the intuitive understanding of how numbers work, how to compare and
estimate quantities in a numerical sequence and finally serves as a basis for future
research [3].
Within the scope of the basic sciences in the general curriculum of infantile and
primary education, mathematics is fundamental and continues its study until superior
education; from the decade of the 70’s of the twentieth century a series of new notions
of relation and equivalence between sets were introduced, that evolved towards a
mechanical conception, and that by the end of the century would be established as
“modern mathematics” with a domain of knowledge centered on the interaction
between the teacher and the student, where knowledge is an important manifestation in
the “games” of the school [4]. Knowing the learning styles for mathematics, allows the
teaching process to adapt to the student, and becomes a practice with significant

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

Á. Rocha and T. Guarda (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Information
Technology & Systems (ICITS 2018), Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 721,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73450-7_58
 Educational Math Game for Stimulation of Children 615

improvements in learning [5]; research demonstrates how didactic resources from

mathematics textbooks achieve development of learning styles, centered on modalities
that group each style into active, reflective, theoretical and pragmatic [6]; in congru-
ence, from modeling and evaluation of interaction in computer-supported learning and
game-based learning achieves improvements in learning quality [7]. From this context
of video games a tool of teaching support is proposed as a complement to the didactic
strategies of the teacher.
As a general objective, it is proposed the development of an educational game for
children with dyscalculia, which is available to the public on the platforms Arcade and
Android. Several specific objectives have been established for its fulfillment, starting
with the identification of the characteristics of the dyscalculia and its connection with
the didactic resources, which will allow to know in depth the learning difficulties that
children have with dyscalculia and to find the best solutions to deal with such diffi-
culties; the second refers to the design of assessment models applied to children with
dyscalculia, and measures the degree of learning in which children with this disorder
are found; the third is the development and publication of the educational game and the
last is the evaluation of the didactic game in an application scenario, to verify the
impact that the game has on children suffering from this disorder.
The main limitation in meeting the objectives is presented with teachers and parents
who do not have enough time to give continuous support to the project and therefore
the necessary information of feedback is not reached in time, extending the times of
development and tests. Another limitation is the cognitive bias of the subject, since the
results obtained from the assessments depend on the degree of knowledge of these in
the area of learning (mathematics), varying between different contexts.
For the development of the educational game project, the agile XP development
methodology is used, which has features such as: simplicity, communication and
feedback; this methodology will be ideal for developing short-term projects. Several
applications have been used for the planning, design, development and implementation
of the application: GameSalad Creator and Viewer, OpenProj, Adobe Photoshop CS2,
Voice Record Pro, and C++ as programming language base.

2 Dyscalculia and Education

2.1 Dyscalculia
In the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-IV), dyscalculia is exposed as a disorder of calculation, having as its main
characteristic the limitation of arithmetic capacity (measured by standardized calcula-
tion tests or mathematical reasoning individually), which is below that expected with
respect to individuals of chronological age, IQ and schooling [8]; This disorder sig-
nificantly interferes with academic performance and everyday activities that require
skills with numbers and calculus.
From the biological perspective Developmental Discalculia (DD) starts from the
presupposition that the genetic syndrome is the cause of alterations in the cognitive
profile related to numerical processing; a premise that has been supported by studies of
622 P. Torres-Carrión et al.

Fig. 3. Evaluation of the application. Case study

6 Conclusions

The non-technological didactic resources most used in the dyscalculia disorder were
the basis for the development of the educational game that helps to treat the charac-
teristics that these children present. Through a real scenario of application of the
educational game, it was verified that this technological resource is an effective tool to
treat children suffering from this disorder.
Children, teachers, parents and the community in general have an educational game
available that will help improve math skills and reduce dyscalculia disorder; this
application has a friendly interface, simple and easy to use, according to the require-
ments of the user. The game will be available on platforms Arcade and Android, and is
free to download.
The XP methodology was a great help for the development of the game. As it is an
agile methodology, and have continuous versions in each iteration, the user has a
resource on which to provide feedback.

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