Needs Analysis for Developing a Board Game for Integer-operation Procedural Fluency in Junior High School

Abstract

This study presents a needs analysis for developing a board game to support integer-operation learning and procedural fluency among seventh-grade junior high school students. Conducted as the preliminary stage of a research and development study, the analysis combined classroom observation, structured teacher interviews, and a timed written test. Participants were one mathematics teacher and 26 seventh-grade students at a public junior high school in Kudus Regency, Indonesia, selected through purposive sampling. Observation and interviews showed that instruction remained dominated by written drills without game-based media, while school policy restricted mobile-phone and internet use, making non-digital media a more realistic option for this context. Test results showed an average accuracy of only 60.7 percent, well below the 75 percent fluency threshold, with 30.8 percent of students classified as requiring intervention; addition and subtraction showed the weakest performance, with addition also showing a dual weakness in accuracy and speed. Ability was highly heterogeneous across students, and no significant correlation was found between integer-operation fluency and social-arithmetic performance. These findings indicate that students need meaningful, repeatable, non-digital practice media, while teachers need media that accommodate diverse abilities without adding to their instructional design workload. This study contributes empirically grounded design requirements that can guide the development of board-game media for procedural fluency in similarly resourced junior high school settings.