Development and Evaluation of Game-Based Learning System for Differential Calculus

One important task of every teacher is to help improve his/her student's ability of thinking and reasoning. The ability to think and reason out vigorously is one of the substantial learning that the student can achieve. Now, everybody is in the process of changing because of the advances in technology and as the technology continues to grow, the application of Mathematics to Science becomes superior. To reach the utmost potential of our students' mathematical skills, there are a lot of numerous ways we can do as teachers to achieve this and one of the methods or strategies that can be instigated is through game-based learning. As an educator, we always seek to determine first if the students are ready to learn the new topics that we are about to discuss and this is based on what they already know. Difficulty in coping with the topics is then experienced by the students if they lack the needed mathematical skills for a particular lesson. In this study, the researcher developed a game-based diagnostic test and learning intervention for freshman engineering students for the course in Differential Calculus. The learning intervention was developed as a tool for mastery of topics for the course. The goal of the game-based learning system is for the students to bridge the gap of mastery in their Pre-Calculus most especially for the non-STEM students who were not able to take Pre-Calculus in their senior high school strand. The researcher also investigated if the game-based learning system eventually strengthened students' mathematical skills required in improving the performances in the course Differential Calculus. The researcher presented the acceptability of the game-based learning system, the comparison in the academic performance of the freshman engineering students who were exposed in traditional bridging with game-based learning intervention and those who were exposed with the purely traditional bridging program in the General Mathematics, Diagnostic Pretest and Posttest and Differential Calculus Final Grade.