Prodigy Education | Make learning math fun! (2020, August 10). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1_V75nK67M&feature=youtu.be
Did you know 17% of Americans suffer from high levels of math anxiety? (Kennedy, 2109).
Introduction
Prodigy is an online role-playing game used for math practice that is free to parents, students, administration, and teachers worldwide from first to eighth grade. Prodigy is used by more than 90 million students and 1.5 million teachers worldwide (Nisbet, 2019). Prodigy is highly interactive, emotionally engaging, and cognitively engaging to support math learning.
It works by using adaptative learning to customize content and reinforce instruction for areas students are struggling; Prodigy incorporates a math curriculum with a fun video game environment that appeals to students. Prodigy can adjust questions to support class lessons and to review material on a student-by-student basis. Finally, the teacher can collect live data and reports on questions and time the student spends playing in and out of the class.
Gamification
According to Gamification and the Future of Education (2017), successful Gamification has four successful freedom of plays: the freedom to fail, freedom to experiment, freedom to assume a different identity, and the freedom of effort. Prodigy has all 4 of those.
A student has control over their world, and it allows the student to pick a world that a friend is also in so they could play together. The student can create a personalized character based on hair, skin, and eyes; they next choose their wizards name, allowing them the freedom to assume any identity. A student can get in “battles” with opponents that are mathematic equations, giving the learner freedom of failure without stakes to be made with little consequences if they get the answer wrong. A student can have freedom of play during Prodigy because it allows students to go through periods of intense activity. The more extended student play, the more questions they answer, allowing for freedom of experiment because they can explore new information on the game's math and levels. Letting the student feel like they have control over Prodigy will motivate them to continue learning math. Students who play Prodigy can believe the outcome of the game they are playing is controllable and resulting from their abilities instead of luck (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017).
Video games for kids are fun, and incorporating them into learning can increase engagement and motivation. Giving the student an option to learning through a game is informal, which allows for Prodigy’s interface to be integrated into the student’s school and personal life smoothly, thus making learning happen seamlessly (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017). A child can unlock in-game benefits like accessories, exclusive pets, and rewards, making it more fun for the learner to keep going. The student will be completing “assessments,” but the student really will not even know because it is all part of the adventure. Gamification has instant feedback systems for students using it, promoting both students learning interest and classroom interactions because of its diverse elements (Sun & Hsieh, 2018).
Prodigy overall stimulates a student’s curiosity because of the game design interface. Every world or move the student chooses is new as a student gets to challenge others on their journey, which allows the student rewards. Getting a math question right and winning that “battle” by getting points or a reward motivates the student to keep going, leading to the curiosity of what challenge or reward will be next. That is giving the student extrinsic motivation to continue playing the game and answering more math questions. Though Prodigy is a fun video game, students are more likely to play it for their pleasure, not because they might accomplish something. However, according to Reiser & Dempsey (2017), there can be a mix of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, but extrinsic motivation can be used to build learners' intrinsic motivation carefully. If a student can remain on task, extrinsic motivation can play a crucial role because of their desire to obtain positive rewards or, in this case, their math goals.
Prodigy Education | Here’s what teachers say about Prodigy. (2020, July 28). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-vVESbTv3c&feature=youtu.be
Benefits for teachers
Prodigy seems to work for all. A team of professionals designed it. It allows teachers to easily differentiative and keep track of every student’s progress. Prodigy eliminates grading because it has an adaptive algorithm that allows teachers to highlight areas of progress. Each year there are typically different standards for kids in each grade as they progress, and Prodigy can help target those standards and domains for the teacher’s classroom. Prodigy is also a great way for teachers to connect with parents and support at-home learning to ensure the student is on track.
Parent involvement
In research from Nisbet (2019), Prodigy is used by 3 million parents. Prodigy can keep a parent active in their children’s learning by giving the parent instant progress. With a global pandemic happening and the increasing demands of parents' support in education, it can be challenging for them to play both teacher role and parent at home. Prodigy is a great, easy tool for parents to stay involved in their child’s maths progress. Prodigy allows the parent to view where their child might need more practice or excel by giving them monthly report cards and curriculum progress. Research shows that parental involvement is more critical to children’s academic success than their families, race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or educational background (Amatea & West, 2007; Henderson & Berla, 1994).
Proven Success
Prodigy has data to prove its high success rate being that it is ranked #1 for supporting Learning (Nisbet, 2019). 97 school districts in California currently use Prodigy, students answered over 200 years’ worth of questions answered for the equivalent of 218.2 years. Compared to the 122.9% increase in questions answered at school between August and December, those answered at home increased by 129.4%. This data shows out-of-school engagement was very positive, students answered nearly 57 million questions at home and going further, students answered 11% of those questions on Saturdays and Sundays (How Prodigy Is Boosting Math Engagement Levels across California, 2019).
According to research (How Prodigy Engaged Tennessee Students with Math Practice, 2019)
more than 142,000 questions answered by students in an elementary school in Tennessee, compared to the U.S average of around 17,000 questions. 41% of in-game questions were answered at home, which means students were often practicing math outside of school, due to high engagement with the game.
References:
Gamification and the Future of Education. (2017, June 6). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWPDYhtX96Y&feature=youtu.be
How Prodigy engaged Tennessee students with math practice. (2019, April 25). Prodigy. https://prodigy-website.cdn.prismic.io/prodigy-website/38ce400b-3fdb-49a9-9daa-0d048e70d3d4_Tennessee-Case-Study.pdf
How Prodigy is boosting math engagement levels across California. (2019, April 25). Prodigy. https://prodigy-website.cdn.prismic.io/prodigy-website/d0c7a2de-86ee-4213-8249-482008ff35a6_California-Engagement-Case-Study-1-compressed.pdf
Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun, & Pei-Hsun Hsieh. (2018). Application of a Gamified Interactive Response System to Enhance the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation, Student Engagement, and Attention of English Learners. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(3), 104–116.
Kennedy. (2019, September 30). How Attitude Towards Math Impacts Student Achievement. Prodigy Education. https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/attitude-towards-math/
Nisbet. (2019, March 12). A Parent’s Guide to Prodigy: Goals, Reports, Memberships. Prodigy Education. https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/parents-guide-to-prodigy/
Parental Involvement as a Important Factor for Successful Education. (2017). Ceps, 7(3), 137–153. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1156936.pdf
Reiser, R. A., Dempsey, J. V. (2017). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, 4th Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf 9.3.0]. Retrieved from vbk://9780134237039
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Prodigy is a great site to learn and develop abilities through gaming. This game increases the motivation of kids to learn more and be better at math helps decrease the anxiety on kids and makes them more confident with their skills. It is great that parents and teachers can keep track of the child's progress easily. Motivation is something that can be taught or instructed to people to get or do, motivation is something that will grow in the person and increase their curiosity to find out more about the topic or learn that is being taught. It is amazing to see the different ways that people learn and it is more impressive to see how a…
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