Both can be scary! But they can be fun too.
Mathemarmite offers young children an opportunity to hone their counting abilities in a cosy, timeless and friendly environment where they can follow various recipes and mix specific ingredients in the right quantities in a cauldron to cast spells and discover a variety of monstrous transformations that they can immortalize in their Monster Photobook.
Mathemarmite, however, is not only a game—it is also a research project conducted by the xCIT research group at the University of Luxembourg in collaboration with experts in children’s mathematical abilities and machine learning. Data gathered as people play the game is used to personalize in real-time the individual's learning experience but is also processed extensively offline to improve our understanding of the human mind. Knowledge gained with the data collected in this game will be used to improve the game and hopefully learning in subsequent iterations.
By playing Mathemarmite we hope that your child will have fun with math and contribute to the development of better educational games for future generations.
The xCIT research group (http://xcit.org) was founded by Prof. Cardoso-Leite in June 2017 at the University of Luxembourg with the support of the Luxembourg National Research Fund (ATTRACT/2016/ID/11242114/DIGILEARN). Digital learning is a main research focus at the University of Luxembourg and the Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education.
The uniqueness of the xCIT research group is in its combination of expertise across various domains ranging from game design and development, to machine learning, data science and psychology. The goal of xCIT is to combine the rigour of scientific investigations with the compelling and engaging aspect of commercial digital environments in order to improve our understanding of human learning and to create scientifically validated, efficient learning games and apps that people would actually want to use.
Mathermarmite is our first attempt to do so. It focuses on early math abilities because they are fundamental in future academic and professional success. The theme of the game involves (not so scary) monsters because we wanted to plant the seed in children’s mind that monsters and math don’t need to be scary and can in fact be the source of fun, creativity and joy.
Mathermarmite is the result of a teamwork; nevertheless some aspects of the game can be more readily attributed to specific people. The unique visual universe of the game was created by graphic artist and game designer Maxime Magnin to be friendly and timeless but not childish. The sound effects and musics, created by sound designer Jan Morgenstein brought the game to life and hopefully will grasp players into the game world. The implementation and development of the game was orchestrated impeccably by Aurélien Defossez and the intricate design and setup of backend systems to efficiently and securely store data was led by Brice Clocher.
The xCIT research group from the University of Luxembourg.
October 31, 2018
iOS, Android, Windows (soon)
Free
Be immersed in a colorful, timeless universe with hand-drawn animations and a soundscape that react to your actions
Explore thousands of combinations of transformations to create the monster you like
Explore various representations for quantities and how they relate to each other
Play with numbers in a friendly and safe environment
Contribute to science and the development of better educational games
We welcome your comments, suggestions and questions regarding any aspect of Mathemarmite.
Just send us an email to contact@xcit.org
