Dr. Mahtob Aqazade loves math, but she remembers a time when she didn’t.
“I had this up-and-down relationship with mathematics as a student. I was good at math in elementary school, then not so good in middle school,” she said. “I wasn’t performing as well as I had before, so I felt like I didn’t like math because I wasn’t doing well.”
An influential high school math teacher reignited Aqazade’s interest in math, enough so that she pursued math education as a career. She fought through that period when math “became more complicated” but knows that many students today don’t, won’t, or can’t.
Now an assistant professor in Illinois State’s Department of Mathematics, Aqazade is conducting research that aims to address students’ feelings toward math and their readiness to learn new mathematical concepts. Specifically, she and her co-principal investigators (co-PIs) seek to introduce the concept of negative numbers to elementary school students to prepare them for the jump to middle school when they’re first exposed to algebra.
And Aqazade and her research team plan to reach students through an inviting, crowd-pleasing medium.
“There’s a lot of research out there about math anxiety, math interest, math motivation, and how those play a role in how you feel about math,” Aqazade explained. “So, our focus is on developing and designing games that are actually motivating students and engaging them in mathematical thinking.”
Board games and card games have long served educational purposes. Operation teaches young people about basic anatomy. Mad Libs show them the difference between a noun and a verb and an adjective. There are countless games that support math education—it may be the academic discipline most compatible with educational games—but few are suited for an in-school setting. Monopoly, for instance, has hundreds of pieces, cards, and slips of paper money. Games typically last 1-2 hours.
Aqazade and her fellow researchers plan to develop games that can start and finish within 10-15 minutes without sacrificing the fun factor kids experience in store-bought games.
“We want to help students to see math beyond procedure, beyond numbers and formulas,” Aqazade said. “The key is making math joyful for students, motivating them to do something that they might not even necessarily think of as math.”
The three-and-a-half-year research project, “Design and Development of Integer Games to Reduce Barriers to Algebra,” is supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) grant funding and began with an initial sum of $289,614 awarded earlier this year.
This fall, the researchers are developing games to be reviewed by education experts to ensure rules and mechanics are grade-level appropriate. This spring, Aqazade will take the research team’s first prototypes out on the road. Students will be tested on their understanding of integer principles before and after four gameplay sessions.
Aqazade’s initial focus group will be fourth-graders in Peoria Public Schools. Her co-PIs will work with second- and third-graders in Indiana and Oregon, respectively. The group hopes the varied demographics of its research participants help it design games with broad appeal.
“The key is making math joyful for students, motivating them to do something that they might not even necessarily think of as math.”
—Dr. Mahtob Aqazade
The research group will develop two games a year for the first three years of the project. The final six months of the researchers’ work will be dedicated to refining and “commercializing” the games, Aqazade said. That capstone will be informed by students’ grasp of mathematical concepts, as well their motivation to play the games.
“Hopefully, these games can provide early exposure,” Aqazade said. “We hope that when they get to algebra, and negative numbers are formally introduced, they will be like, ‘Oh, I remember this!’”
The research project is Aqazade’s first to receive grant funding, and it’s special for other reasons, too. One of her co-PIs is her master’s and doctoral advisor, Dr. Laura Bofferding, of Purdue University. The other is an Illinois State alum, Dr. Nicole M. Wessman-Enzinger, Ph.D. ’15, a professor at George Fox University. The research team’s international advisory board also has Illinois State connections; it includes Dr. Josh Hertel, M.S. ’09, Ph.D. ’13, a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Aqazade said her research has been wholly supported by Illinois State’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and her home department.
“Understanding how young students develop mathematical understanding is vital in finding supports to bolster their learning,” said Dr. Benton Duncan, chair of Illinois State’s math department, which includes the popular mathematics teacher education program. “Student success in college-level mathematics is predicated on building a solid foundation in elementary school, where too often students decide, despite evidence to the contrary, that they’re just not good at math.
“Mahtob Aqazade’s project will help play an important role in helping with this, and we are hopeful that it will lead to improved student success in elementary-level understanding of mathematics.”
Aqazade said the goal of her group’s work is simple: to advance the field of math education.
“We hope that it can help us be better teachers and educators,” she said. “I hope I can apply it to my teaching, and that others can learn from it and apply it to their research and their teaching.”
Aqazade’s research project is among several led by College of Arts and Sciences faculty to recently receive funding.
“Harnessing Machine Learning Techniques for Atomic and Molecular Collisions”
Dr. Allison Harris, Department of Physics
NSF funding for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25): $234,795
“Selective Excitation and Charge Dynamics of Dark Molecular Transitions”
Drs. Uttam Manna and Mahua Biswas, Department of Physics
NSF funding for FY25: $391,078
“Energy decay for the time dependent damped wave equation”
Dr. Peter Kleinhenz, Department of Mathematics
NSF funding for FY25: $225,697
“Midwest Conferences on Quantum Symmetry and Beyond”
Dr. Gaywalee Yamskulna, Department of Mathematics
NSF funding for FY25: $49,900
“Simulations of MS Spectra: Examining Post-Translational Modifications and Nucleosides”
Dr. George Barnes, Department of Chemistry
NSF funding for FY25: $396,000
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