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I still remember the first time students in my high school geometry class had one of those “aha moments.” I was drawing a conclusion on the board, and I heard an audible gasp from half the class as they thought, “Oh, wow, I get it!”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I thought, “Oh my God, I want that to happen every day.”

Of course, those moments don’t happen every day, and I learned just how hard it can be to create them myself shortly after that experience.

I had a student in his junior year who was years behind as a result of illness and was struggling to catch up. I worked with him through the regular semester and summer school, and he progressed from Algebra I through AP Calculus in about two years. There were many aha moments for him along the way and, more importantly, a future with college in it, but it required a lot of investment and hard work from both of us—and that was for one student!

I decided that I wanted to learn how to make those moments happen at scale. As profound as it felt to me to inspire my students, these moments are even more powerful for the students to whom math suddenly makes sense, to whom college may no longer feel out of reach.

It turns out that we know enough about the brain to make aha moments happen for students, and games are good vehicles for inspiring them.

It’s easy to see why educational games are appealing. Who doesn’t like games? As educators, we know our students are playing them, and we know that students learn better when they are intrinsically motivated to engage with material.

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