Giannakos. 2014. Design Principles for Serious Video Games in Mathematics Education: From Theory to Practice



Giannakos provides examples of design methodologies for mathematics education in games. The following is my annotation of the paper.



This article establishes a system of design rules that create simultaneously educational and serious video games then provides examples of games designed with these methodologies in mind. It uses a wide array of papers related to serious video game design to arrive at the conclusion of 4 different design principles. For serious games to succeed in mathematics education, they must: 1) engage students with a narrative. 2) engage students with familiar game mechanics. 3) allow error to be an opportunity to try again. 4) engage students with collaborative learning.


While the experts behind this paper performed no experiment or meta-analysis, they implemented its design rules in a series of games based off of classic video game titles. They first designed a game with narrative that was based off of side scroller video games. Then, they developed a different game which also included trial and error, such that the player never got a game over, and collaborative learning, in which students would have to work with others while playing and thinking about the game.


This paper focuses on the concepts of game design that benefits both games and learning. It is similar to the "How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter" study by Johnson in that both articles demonstrate that the process of playing games can develop cognitive skills.

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