Hillsborough County Public School (HCPS) has expanded its use of DimensionU to include all middle school intensive math classrooms across the County’s 56 middle schools and alternative learning centers. The school system had previously piloted the program in four middle schools following a successful initiative during its 2009 Hillsborough Out-of-School (HOST) summer enrichment program.
“DimensionU’s innovative approach truly promotes student motivation and enjoyment of mathematics. But what’s most important is achievement. Students who used the DimensionU games in our summer program demonstrated an average 19 percent improvement as measured by pre/post-tests,” said Janet Bauman, middle school math supervisor. “Expanding the availability of these games to all of our middle school intensive math students was clearly in the best interest of our students.”
With content correlated to state standards and aligned to those of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the DimensionU Games instructional math software, DimensionM, engages students in a series of action adventure missions that incorporate over 200 math skills by way of 3D graphics, animation and storylines equivalent to those in commercial video games. Available on both Windows and Macintosh platforms, the educational video games encourages students to review and practice their math and algebra lessons previously introduced and discussed in class. The DimensionU system provides automatic progress tracking of student results so teachers can augment their instruction if necessary.
“We are pleased that HCPS educators have unilaterally embraced the many advantages and opportunities that serious educational video games provide,” said NtiedoEtuk, chief executive officer and co-founder of Tabula Digita. “Hillsborough’s rapid expansion of DimensionU multiplayer games for math instruction is just one more example of how game-based learning is being acknowledged as a superior supplemental resource to help drive student engagement and achievement in the classroom while sparking a greater interest in STEM education.”
