Children’s Mathematical Reasoning in Online Games: Can Data Mining Reveal Strategic Thinking? Shalom M. Fisch, 1 Richard Lesh, 2 Elizabeth Motoki, 2 Sandra Crespo, 3 and Vincent Melfi 3 1 MediaKidz Research & Consulting, 2 Indiana University, and 3 Michigan State University ABSTRACT—Children’s interaction with educational com- puter 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 educa- tional 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. KEYWORDS—media; computer games; online; mathematics; reasoning; assessment None of us is born with a separate part of our brain that we use exclusively for playing computer games. While playing games, we apply the same sorts of knowledge, inferences, and cognitive skills that we use in our offline lives. With that in mind, researchers who study human–computer interaction have sometimes drawn on established theories of human cognition to explain users’ thinking while playing games (e.g., Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Moreno, 2006) or have noted simi- larities that exist between online and offline thinking and behav- ior (e.g., Gee, 2003). Constructs such as social schemas certainly play vital roles in online social networking (e.g., Subrahmanyama & Greenfield, 2008). Moreover, even when users know that they are interacting with machines rather than other live users, research has shown that the same sorts of social schemas that govern interactions with other people influence these inter- actions, too, regardless of whether the device in question is an animatronic, talking doll (Strommen, 2003) or a desktop computer (Reeves & Nass, 1996). By the same token, when children play educational computer games, we might expect their reasoning to follow the same sorts of paths that they use while figuring out similar educational con- tent in real (offline) life. If so, this would not only help us under- stand children’s use of educational technology but also present a significant methodological opportunity for research. Successful educational games have a tremendous reach among children; for example, the mathematics-based Cyberchase website (http:// www.pbskids.org/cyberchase) has logged more than one billion page views to date. Given the countless bits of data generated while playing a game, data mining could yield a vast pool of data for investigating applied reasoning during naturalistic play. As part of a major, multiyear study of children’s mathematics learning from Cyberchase, our research team explored the possi- bility of using online Cyberchase games as instructional tools and simultaneously as a means of assessing children’s problem solv- ing as well. The field of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) rep- resents a long history of teaching and assessing knowledge via interactive games (e.g., Price, 1989; Rudestam & Schoenholtz- Read, 2002; Suppes & Macken, 1978). However, unlike the kinds of software traditionally used in CAI, Cyberchase was not This research was funded as part of a grant from the National Sci- ence Foundation (DRL-0723829). We gratefully acknowledge the staff, teachers, and students of the participating school. We also thank the Cyberchase production team (especially Sandra Sheppard, Frances Nankin, and Michael Templeton) for their support, and online producers David Hirmes and Brian Lee for building the track- ing software we used here. Finally, we are grateful to the field researchers who helped collect our pilot data: Meredith Bissu, Susan R.D. Fisch, Carmina Marcial, Jennifer Shulman, Nava Silton, Faith Smith, and Carolyn Volpe. Without them, this article—and the development of this methodological approach—would have been impossible. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shalom M. Fisch, MediaKidz Research & Consulting, 78 Grayson Pl., Teaneck, NJ 07666; e-mail: mediakidz@lycos.com. ª 2011 The Authors Child Development Perspectives ª 2011 The Society for Research in Child Development Volume 5, Number 2, 2011, Pages 88–92 CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES