MathaVerse
Learning Algebra Inside a World
What if the coordinate plane wasn't a diagram on paper — but a place you could walk through?
Imagine standing inside a vast grid stretching across space. A malfunctioning station drifts in orbit. Maintenance robots are crashing into critical systems. The only way to repair them is simple: Find their coordinates.
MathaVerse began as an experiment in immersive learning — exploring what happens when mathematics becomes a mechanic inside a world, rather than a problem on a worksheet.
The Idea
Many students can navigate complex environments with ease. They track positions, follow maps, and reason spatially while playing games or exploring digital worlds. Yet when those same ideas appear in a classroom — coordinates, graphs, slopes — they often feel abstract and disconnected.
The question behind MathaVerse was simple: What happens if mathematics is experienced instead of explained?
Instead of plotting points on paper, students would move through a coordinate plane. Instead of reading about graphs, they would interact with them inside a world.
The goal was not to replace traditional instruction, but to explore whether spatial interaction could make foundational mathematical ideas feel more intuitive.
A Fortunate Collaboration
This project emerged through a collaboration with Donggil Song, Associate Professor of Engineering Technology at Texas A&M University and director of the Einbrain Lab.
Dr. Song's work focuses on human-AI collaboration and immersive technologies for learning. His lab has developed several major educational platforms, including Algeverse, a virtual reality system designed to support college algebra learning, and MedChat, now used in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Sam Houston State University.
Collaborating with a researcher deeply involved in immersive learning provided a space to explore these ideas more seriously. MathaVerse became a small experimental step in the right direction.
Enter the Grid
The prototype focused on one foundational concept:
The rectangular coordinate system. On paper, the coordinate plane is abstract — a set of lines and numbers used to locate points. In virtual reality, that same grid becomes a space you can inhabit. Axes become landmarks. Coordinates become destinations. Points become places you can move toward. Instead of plotting a coordinate like (3, 4) on a worksheet, students navigate through the grid to locate it physically. The idea was simple: if learners could experience the structure of the coordinate plane spatially, the underlying concept might become easier to grasp.
Turning Algebra Into Gameplay
To make the experience engaging, the learning environment was framed as a small narrative. A space station's maintenance system has malfunctioned. Robots responsible for repairs are drifting out of position and colliding with critical equipment. As the station's chief engineer, the player must restore order. Each robot's location is described using coordinates on the station's navigation grid. That grid is the coordinate plane. Repairing the robots requires locating their positions and guiding them back to the correct points. In this way, plotting coordinates is no longer an isolated exercise — it becomes the core mechanic of the game. Mathematics is not presented before the gameplay begins. It is the mechanism that makes the world function.
Curriculum Design
Although the prototype focused on the coordinate system, the broader learning path was designed across seven modules:
Each stage would expand the environment while introducing new mathematical ideas through interaction and exploration. The intention was to gradually move from spatial navigation to more advanced algebraic reasoning.
When Research Takes Unexpected Turns
The project was ultimately paused after federal research funding supporting the work was withdrawn. Alongside the project, I had also been offered a scholarship and Teaching Assistant position at Texas A&M University, which unfortunately disappeared when the funding situation changed.
What Stayed With Me
Even as a prototype, MathaVerse changed how I think about learning.
It reinforced a simple observation:
- Many ideas that feel difficult on paper become clearer when they are experienced inside a system.
- Walking through a coordinate grid feels different from reading about one.
- The project left behind a working prototype, a full curriculum outline, and a deeper interest in immersive learning.
- But it also revived a much older question I had been thinking about for years.
From the Ashes
When the MathaVerse project paused, the idea behind it didn't disappear. If anything, it became clearer. For years I had been thinking about a different subject entirely — physics. While studying for my exams, I often found myself imagining how the laws of physics might feel if they were experienced instead of memorized. What if inertia wasn't a sentence in a textbook, but something you felt while drifting through space? What if acceleration wasn't a formula, but the result of firing a thruster? That question became the starting point for my next experiment. A small robot.
A broken space station.
And a game designed to teach Newtonian physics through interaction. The project became POBE.→ Read the POBE Project
VR Design, Development & Curriculum Integration — Abrar Shams Chowdhury
Research Collaboration — Donggil Song, Einbrain Lab — Texas A&M University
Status: prototype built · project paused due to funding withdrawal