As we continue building e-learning courses and interactive worksheets for our students, we constantly try to introduce more educational games which children will enjoy ( our experience tells us that our adult students also enjoy games).
Recently, we have been working on creating Mazes. Typically, mazes involve starting from one corner of the maze, navigating through a path and then reaching the intended target. The complexity of mazes depends on the complexity of the walls or paths inside the maze. A labyrinth with a lot of dead-end walls can be extremely difficult to navigate. However, we have kept the quite simple.
Mazes as educational games
To use mazes as educational games for our E-Learning courses, we have used the following approach:
The target is the answer to a question displayed on top. E.g If the question is 2+1 , the answer 3 and a the confounding choices such as 5 and 6 are at the end of the maze. The student has to drag an object or a bunny rabbit to the answer.
The student cannot touch the walls. If the walls are touched the object or the rabbit which ash to be dragged goes back to the starting point.
However, to keep things simple, we have kept the wall very simple and the path quite wide. So, most of our students would be able to use the mazes quite easily.
Advantages of using mazes as educational games
Mazes provide several advantages as educational games. Apart from adding to the fun element and motivating students, especially children to learn and to demand more such educational games, mazes bring in some additional aspects. Students learn how to navigate paths. If there is a parent or teacher prompting the student (which is often likely when someone is assisting), then students learn following directions. Go up, go left and so on could be the prompts and the student tries. Imagine, trying to teach a student how to follow directions and the reluctance shown if it were a dull lecture. In this instance, there is no mention of directions or following commands; yet a student who is motivated to win the game, will be eager to follow directions and get to the target.
Finally, the maze is providing an additional educational game to teach the concept you want to. We have started by implementing mazes in addition and division in our Maths courses. Soon, we will be using mazes to teach other concepts as well. So, one could use a maze wherever matching is required. E.g there could be a maze game where the student is expected to take a rabbit or a ball to capital A.