MOATT

MOATT’s motto is “creating a hunger to learn”. Learning is now something to look forward to as you play with your friends online and or in person. Game night now has a greater purpose! Memory Operations Amplification Teaching Tool offers users to learn and solidify their knowledge. In the app, students can study and learn and test out what they learned by playing a board game that quizzes their knowledge of the material that they learned. The user that wins has sufficient understanding and is ready for the real quiz in class. The rest of the users technically lost, but also win because the real prize of the game is knowledge. In other words, although they lost, these students have been quizzed and seen what their deficiencies are and can go back to study what they lack knowledge in. They have also learned while playing by answering wrong and seeing what the answers should look like from the other players with ready-made multiple-choice or free-response questions.

The game takes place in the retro-futuristic land of Nova-Arkadia. The user must get to the end of the board before the other players. In order to move along the board, the user must answer quiz questions. Unlike any other board game, this game’s questions are relevant to what the user is studying. For instance, Eunice who is 10 years old, is given a practice quiz on decimal fractions by her teacher Ms. Yeo. This quiz is uploaded to MOATT and is used as the quiz that moves along the game. In order for Eunice to move on the board, she needs to answer the question given to her correctly and on time. Of course, like in real life, there are obstacles along the way that prevent the player from winning.

Students:
Users are able to study material shared by other users around the world. A study sheet and practice quiz made by “Ms. Hernandez” in Los Angeles for her AP biology class can be used by a student in Boston to play a round of MOATT with his or her friends to study for the upcoming AP exam. A student has now made time to study by playing a game. A student is also able to socially interact with other students by playing a boardgame, something they would have done in the past for fun. But now, a student plays for a purpose while having fun with their friends.

Teachers:
What teacher does not have trouble with student engagement? The best of us still have trouble getting our students motivated to study and learn. With MOATT, teachers can upload or use other teachers' and user-made quizzes to informally assess students. The “oh no”s will become empathic “YES!”s. This is achieved by increasing engagement in the subject matter. Cognitive science point to greater retention of memory when more neurological connections are made in the brain. Thus the more connections made, the more places and schemas the brain has to recall information at a faster rate. The addition of a sport-like game in academics creates a layer of emotion and thus another connection (one of the largest). Internal assessments and standardized tests don’t always tell the whole story, but in education, they are used as empirical evidence to demonstrate learning. Classes that have used MOATT have increased test scores. Yet the most important factor was giving them the desire to learn. Teachers can use this as a bridge against the learning gap.

A teacher can host a live in-class game in “team mode” allowing for them to put students into teams and have students answer questions as a team (individually answered but counted toward the team movement). A teacher can also assign this as homework and see the statistics on their students to drive their instruction.

Modes:

Host= A player or a referee. They set up the game using created quizzes, quizzed by other users, or free responses.

Ref= A host who judges the responses of the user during free-response questions.

Individual Player= Single user not in a team.

Team Mode= Users placed in a group and collectively answer questions a turn at a time.