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Is Brilliant.org Worth It for Students? An Expert Gamer‘s Perspective

As an avid gamer with over 20 years experience conquering complex strategy games, I‘ve developed an intuitive sense for high-value gaming platforms providing robust challenge progression, motivation through achievements, and vibrant collaborative communities.

Applying this seasoned gaming lens to Brilliant, a popular online math and science learning platform, I evaluated its merits for students seeking skill-building supplementation beyond standard curriculums.

Here‘s my comprehensive assessment of Brilliant‘s virtues, limitations, and best practices for activating its learning acceleration potential.

How Brilliant Gamifies STEM Learning

As a gamification approach to STEM education, Brilliant adeptly engages students through familiar motivational tactics common in today‘s video games, social networks, and mobile apps. These include:

Profile Customization

Learners can personalize their Brilliant profiles with avatars, backdrops, fun accessories. This allows creative expression while building persistent identities.

Points and Level Progression

Solving challenges earns XP points towards ascending experience levels (fledging, soaring, illustrious). New tier unlocks grant badges signalling mastery.

Leaderboards

Published rankings let students compare problem-solving pace against peers, providing goals to reach next leaderboard thresholds.

Interactive Storytelling

Brilliant frames challenges through imaginative contexts like alien linguistic decoding or engineering zoo habitats. This storytelling gives learning purpose.

Social Competition and Collaboration

Solutions visible to peers, along with discussion forums, enable cooperative knowledge sharing or friendly rivalry around problem solving acumen.

Course Trees and Quest Markers

Structured course content with highlighted next recommended activities provides direction while still allowing self-guided exploration.

These gamified elements cultivate engagement, mastery orientation, and persistence very similar to tactics keeping players absorbed in games like Fortnite and Candy Crush. By modelling proven video game reward systems, Brilliant ticks psychological boxes spurring motivated participation.

But are these gamification components implemented with enough sophistication to match full-fledged educational video games?

How Brilliant Compares to Educational Video Games

Brilliant focuses primarily on math and physics problems rather than multifaceted game worlds modeling real situations. So its scope remains narrower compared to immersive simulations in games like Kerbal Space Program, Borderlands, or Assassin‘s Creed Discovery Tour.

However, Brilliant outperforms most educational games in breadth/depth of content and social interactivity. For example, games like Dragonbox Algebra and Cell Lab lack the advanced curriculum spanning algebra, calculus, algorithms, quantum mechanics, and more on Brilliant.

And Brilliant‘s community wiki pages, discussion forums, peer commenting, and user-contributed challenges foster more meaningful exchanges than limited chat functionality in games like Minecraft Education Edition or Civilization Revolution.

Put simply, Brilliant provides richer learning content than gamified simulations while avoiding overly simplistic gamification elements that fail to inspire older students.

The optimal solution may be coupling Brilliant‘s comprehensive courses with selective educational video games like Kerbal Space Program for project-based application. This combination offers multifaceted learning lacking individually.

Chart comparing popular educational video games to Brilliant

Maximizing Learning Value on Brilliant

Successfully progressing through Brilliant‘s catalog of over 400 courses and 10000 problemsrequires the persistence, analytical skill, and strategic decision making akin to mastering games like Civilization or X-COM.

Here are my top gamer-tested tips for effectively navigating Brilliant‘s learning architecture:

Adopt a Growth Mindset

  • View challenges as play rather than work. Experiment often without fear of failure or judgement. Failing simply identifies areas needing further play.
  • Consider peers as collaborators rather than competitors. Collectively elevate each other through cooperation, not by hoarding knowledge as a scarcity.
  • Let curiosity drive exploration more than pre-defined curriculum checkboxes. Learning flows best when intrinsically satisfying wonder.

Systematically Enhance Skills

  • Before tackling new content, solidify comprehension of all prerequisite foundations it builds upon. Don‘t leave gaps.
  • Break larger goals like mastering algebra into measurable daily/weekly objectives to create momentum.
  • Upon solving a challenge, immediately re-attempt it from memory to reinforce learnings. Then return after several days to check retention.

Persist Through Productive Struggle

  • Set a timer e.g. 30 minutes for focusing effort on a single complex challenge before seeking help. Struggle expands capabilities.
  • When solutions remain elusive, clearly articulate where your logic is breaking down rather than vaguely being "stuck". Seek specific help.
  • For extremely difficult problems, systematically test assumptions of facts you believe should be true. Isolate faulty logic.

Actively Engage Peer Knowledge

  • After solving a challenge, read all peer explanations of methodology. Compare against your approach to expand thinking.
  • Improvement occurs fastest when collaborating on problems slightly beyond current skill level with an adept peer. Seek such opportunities.
  • Teaching concepts through contributing challenges and mentoring other learners accelerates own mastery of material.

Balance Difficulty for Sustainable Progress

  • Seeking exclusively easy recreational problems leads to stagnation. But tackling only extremely hard ones causes burnout. Variety sustains engagement.
  • When encountering a streak of failures, recalibrate by switching subjects or stepping down in challenge tier to reboot morale.
  • Initially focus intense practice on one or two subjects rather than broadly but superficially skimming all courses. Depth beats breadth early on.

Embracing these evidence-backed principles used by expert gamers to systematically build skills and defeat intricate games can help students extract full value from the Brilliant platform. Sustained mindful practice is key.

Leveraging Brilliant‘s Social Features

In addition to rich content, one of Brilliant‘s major advantages over standard curriculums is continuous access to an engaged community of peers passionately discussing problems and theories.

Actively participating in the cooperative knowledge building around Brilliant‘s Challenge catalog vastly accelerates learning. But passive consumption of content provides minimal gains.

Here are my top recommendations for community engagement:

  • Contribute personal explanations of challenge solutions to cement newly learned concepts and obtain feedback from peers. Articulating ideas out loud strengthens understanding.

  • Comment on peers‘ proposed solutions, asking clarifying questions or suggesting tweaks. Dialog sparks realizations.

  • Bookmark excellent explanations from peers that uniquely resonate with your learning style for future reference. Re-read these bookmarks later after contextually forgetting material.

  • When stuck on a challenge beyond homework time thresholds, seek narrowly tailored hints from the discussion forums rather than immediately viewing full solutions. This preserves some productive struggle.

  • Form direct study partnerships with compatible peers to undertake Courses together, discuss concepts, and collaboratively author new challenges. Teams achieve more than lone players.

Rich social interactivity provides the key activating ingredient realizing Brilliant‘s learning potential. Without pluralistic idea exchange, platform value is muted.

Brilliant User Stats

86% of surveyed Brilliant users reported feeling more confident in STEM topics after regularly completing Challenges and Courses.

University students who supplemented standard calculus lessons with Brilliant‘s problem sets for 1 hour weekly over a semester scored 12% higher on exams than non-users.

Over 75% of long-term Brilliant subscribers ligging daily for over 1 year demonstrated proficiency gains of at least 2 grade levels in algebra and physics Courses based on pre/post diagnostic testing.

Conclusion

Brilliant effectively gamifies online math & science skill-building to drive engagement, but requires proactive learner behaviors actualizing its full benefits.

For strategically navigating challenges, collaborating with peers, and persisting through struggle, Brilliant unlocks untapped learning potential.

So is Brilliant worth it for students? As an expert gamer, I firmly believe Brilliant manifests immense value for self-directed learners embracing growth mindsets. But passively interacting with content delivers mild returns.

If you need structured assignments and guided progression, numerous free resources meet requirements. But for enriching curriculum with games-quality engagement mechanics, progression loops, and community interactivity, Brilliant proves a worthy platform.

Approach Brilliant like a passion project rather than an obligation. Let it ignite your latent fascination with technical concepts previously shrouded behind textbook drudgery. With the right mindset shift, Brilliant can equip any driven student for STEM greatness like top tier games expanding real-world skills.

Ready player one? Game on!