Discovering the Linear Algebra Education Community at ILAS 2026!
Returning to ILAS 2026, Martijn Boussé discovered an active international Linear Algebra Education community while showcasing the Linear Algebra Card Game.
Last week, I attended the International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS) Conference 2026 at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. I had visited ILAS before during my PhD years, where my work focused on tensor-based methods in signal processing. Returning now from the perspective of educational research and innovation felt quite different.
One thing I did not know before this conference was that ILAS also hosts a very active Linear Algebra Education community, including dedicated minisymposia on teaching, learning, and curriculum design in linear algebra. Discovering this subgroup was honestly one of the highlights of the conference for me.
The welcome was warm and open. I had many interesting discussions with researchers and educators, including Sepideh Stewart and Anthony Cronin, about conceptual understanding, active learning, visualisation, and educational game design in mathematics education. It was refreshing to see how seriously educational questions are taken within a mathematics research conference.
During the conference, I presented our Linear Algebra Card Game (LACG), developed together with several linear algebra teachers at DACS. The game focuses on connecting concepts in linear algebra through collaborative play. Instead of simply adding “fun elements” on top of existing exercises, we try to design the game mechanics themselves around meaningful learning behaviours such as retrieval practice, peer explanation, negotiation, and making conceptual connections.
In the game, players place cards containing concepts, theorems, examples, and applications into a shared grid and need to explain meaningful relationships between the cards. The goal is not speed, but discussion and reasoning.
The session itself was very enjoyable. Participants actively played the game, discussed possible educational applications, and provided useful feedback and ideas for further development. We also handed out several physical copies of the game to educational researchers and instructors who want to explore it further with colleagues and students at their own institutions.
For me personally, this conference was also a reminder that educational innovation in mathematics does not need to remain isolated within individual classrooms or institutions. There is a growing international community interested in carefully designed educational approaches that take both content and pedagogy seriously.
I am looking forward to further developing the Linear Algebra Card Game and continuing the conversations started at ILAS 2026.
More information about the game can be found at www.linearalgebragame.eu.