Two founders setting out to rethink education

At school, Michael Fuchs and Gerhard Dorn could hardly have had more different experiences of mathematics. Gerhard was among the strongest students in his school and won national awards at the age of twelve, while Michael struggled from one year to the next.

Years later, they met during their doctoral studies at an education conference at Graz University of Technology and decided to rethink mathematics education together.

Mathematics as an exciting story

Gerhard had just created an online probability course and embedded it in a compelling story. His enthusiasm for mathematics had carried him all the way to doctoral studies in quantum physics, and he wanted to pass it on.

At the conference, he presented “Captain Bayes and Her Adventures in Probability Theory”: a pixel-art online course with maritime examples and animations designed to motivate learners of probability.

Captain Bayes on iMooX↗

A focus on modern teaching

Michael attended the same event for different reasons. During his doctorate, he had studied education intensively and completed numerous training courses. His school experience had taught him that technical subjects are rarely boring, but are often taught in ways that make them difficult to access.

To demonstrate a different approach, he had already been teaching electronic circuit design in a flipped-classroom format for several years. He received Graz University of Technology’s Award for Excellent Teaching and was nominated for Austria’s national teaching award. Now he wanted to explore how mathematics could be taught better.

Playing and learning: two sides of the same coin

In their first conversations, Gerhard and Michael discovered that their very different school stories were balanced by a shared vision. Both had worked as tutors and exchanged ideas about what modern mathematics education should look like.

Years earlier, Michael had imagined an online role-playing game for tutoring students. Together they developed the idea and decided to found a company.

edventure Studios

The company would put social impact first, use modern teaching methods and combine a tutoring institute with a game studio. They brought together a creative team and began turning the idea into reality.

After several accelerator programmes, including Gründungsgarage, Innovator’s Road Programme and Social Business Hub, the ideas of two very different pupils became edventure Studios GmbH. Today, an entire team works to rethink mathematics education.