McGraw-Hill Education: Everyday Mathematics®: HTML5 Game Design and Development

Keywords:  K12, education, interactives, animation, game design, gamification, HTML5, Pixi.js, flash to html5, conversion

Background

Everyday Mathematics is a comprehensive PreK through grade 6 mathematics program that is engineered for the Common Core State Standards. The Everyday Mathematics spiral curriculum continually reinforces abstract math concepts through concrete real-world applications and practice.

McGraw-Hill Education (MHE) required a development and production partner to develop a set of new games and redevelop existing Flash-based games as discrete, self‐contained, HTML5 interactive games that would run on all devices and platforms. The scope of work involved

• evaluating requirement documents and storyboards for new and existing games

• redeveloping existing games for HTML5 optimization

• developing brand new games using HTML5 technology

• executing a compelling user interface (UI)/user experience (UX)

• ensuring mathematical accuracy through rigorous quality assurance (QA) and testing

Solution

KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.’s instructional design team analyzed MHE’s game requirements. Detailed analysis ensured learning experiences were pedagogically effective, engaging, and consistent with existing gaming products but improved for devices and technology used in today’s classroom.

The development team crafted HTML game templates using JavaScript frameworks best suited for a high‐performance HTML game development and a rich, interactive, and consistent gaming experience across browsers and devices. Each game follows a modular structure, ensuring a discrete, self‐contained, highly scalable, and maintainable game package. Pixi.js, an open-source library under the MIT license, was used for developing game templates in HTML.

KGL’s visual design team created stylized, age-appropriate, interactive animations that delight students when they play the Everyday Mathematics games.

Results

KGL developed, validated, and delivered 315 games. MHE now provides an updated and robust digital learning experience with math activities and games supported across multiple browsers, platforms, and devices. KGL’s QA process ensured consistent functionalities across individual games with quality checkpoints, including

• developer self‐review

• peer review

• ID review

• integration testing

• usability testing

• platform testing

The existing games are now updated, transformed from Flash to HTML5, ensuring high-performance across all devices and browsers. The games capture data and student performance that is reported back to the teacher. New games have been added to the curriculum with all products engineered for the Common Core.

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