Magic Cube: Development of a Mobile Educational Game for Training Learners' Spatial Reasoning Ability

Spatial reasoning is an important ability in math, engineering as well as in our daily life. A common practice to train spatial reasoning is using 3D cube paper models to demonstrate the unfolding process from a 3D cube to a 2D-shape net in class. However, this approach could incur limitations and maintenance cost. This study developed a mobile game - Magic Cube to address this limitation and seek to improve students' engagement. An experiment was conducted to initially evaluate the game with 29 7th grader from a junior high school in northern Taiwan. Results indicate that students' learning performance was improved after playing the game. Also, students generally possessed positive perceptions toward the game and had positive gaming experiences. The detail of the game design and the implications of the results are discussed in this study.