For my interactive multimedia app review, I chose Prodigy, a video game style app which is available as a mobile application and in web application form. In Prodigy students get to design their own wizard and play as this character learning spells and fighting monsters with the end goal to defeat the evil puppet master. There are no lessons in this game, instead students build their math skills by casting spells as each spell must be cast by answering a math question. This makes it a great tool for reinforcing knowledge, whether it be for teachers wanting to give students a fun break from standard lessons or parents who are worried about knowledge loss over the summer.
Prodigy has many positive reviews by teachers and students who view it as a great tool in learning. A study on the app by John Hopkins University found that students using the game were engaged and “that, on average, increased use of the Prodigy program was significantly correlated with increased achievement gains for students on a standardized mathematics assessment.” (John Hopkins University, 2020) But how does it fair in terms of the principles of multimedia learning? I took some time to play Prodigy so I could not only understand how it works but also so I could assess the multimedia theories that are being used in this game. I found that it adheres to several of the principles, signaling is frequently seen as as the important terms in questions are highlighted and if clicked on there is an explanation of the term. The Modality Principle is seen in the use of both words and images in both the ‘game’ aspects and math problem aspects of prodigy while the Interactivity Effect is followed as students are able to control the pace of their game and the grade level they play at.
Despite some areas of victory Prodigy is not perfect and fails to follow the Redundancy Principle and the Embodiment Principle with characters frequently appearing on screen to speak while text of their speech appears at the bottom of the screen. However, these aspects are not as frequent during the question answering portion of the game, so they are not hampering learning too severely. Outside of the multimedia learning principles there are a few issues with Prodigy as it does often encourage players to become payed members which can be concerning for parents trying to avoid accidental credit card charges.
Overall, I really enjoyed playing Prodigy. Playing felt very similar to other animated games I used to play as a kid however this time there was math involved. While this app in no way could take the place of a standard math lessons I think it could be used very effectively as a tool to reinforce concepts and keep math fresh in kids minds. Below I included some screen-grabs I took while playing the game so you can get a better idea of what it looks like.
A) An example of the game’s animation style.
B) An example of a question asked at a seventh-grade level.
C) An example of the what an explanation of a key term looks like.
Bibliography
John Hopkins University. (2020). Evaluation of Prodigy: Key Findings. https://www.prodigygame.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Prodigy-Evaluation-Key-Findings_Final.pdf
