Children's Mathematical Reasoning in Online Games: Can Data Mining Reveal Strategic Thinking?

Children's interaction with educational computer games reflects not only their game-playing expertise but also their knowledge and skills about embedded educational content. Recent pilot data, drawn from an ongoing evaluation of children's learning from educational media, illustrate that, much like earlier research on formal classroom mathematics, children may engage in cycles of increasingly sophisticated mathematical thinking over the course of playing an online game. It is possible to detect these shifts in strategies not only through in-person observations, but via data mining of online tracking data as well. This article discusses implications for the study of mathematical reasoning, children's use of educational games, and assessment.