Linear Algebra
Card Game

The Linear Algebra Card Game is designed for teachers who teach a standard first-year undergraduate linear algebra course. It is intended to be played by students during tutorial sessions, where it complements lectures and traditional exercises by encouraging discussion, explanation, and conceptual understanding. The game can also be used for revision sessions and outreach activities.

There are two ways to use the game:

• Print & Play (Open Educational Resource)
  Download the files for free, print and cut the cards yourself, and use them in your own teaching under the terms of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
• Premium Version
  Order the professionally produced version with high-quality cards and packaging, ready to use in the classroom.

Both versions contain similar educational content.

More traditional linear algebra exercises often focus on carrying out calculations correctly. The Linear Algebra Card Game instead emphasizes conceptual understanding. Rather than solving computations, students identify relationships between concepts, examples, definitions, and theorems, and explain those connections to their peers. By combining retrieval practice, peer discussion, and mathematical communication in a playful setting, the game helps students build a richer mental model of linear algebra while remaining closely aligned with the topics covered in a standard first-year course.

The game has been developed and refined by the teachers who use it in their own first-year linear algebra courses at Maastricht University. Our experiences have been very positive: students actively discuss concepts, explain their reasoning to one another, and make connections between topics that are often taught separately. To better understand its educational impact, we are currently conducting a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research project that investigates how the game influences conceptual understanding, engagement, and learning.

The game has been covered in:

• —De Ingenieur — Issue 6, 2026 (subscription required)
• —IMAGE — Bulletin of the International Linear Algebra Society
• —UM Library — From classroom to the world: the card game as an open resource
• —UM Faculty of Science and Engineering — Count your cards and do your maths

A SEFI conference paper (via Zenodo) is forthcoming, together with pieces in edUMinded and MathEDN.

Throughout 2026 the game is presented at linear algebra and mathematics education venues across Europe and the United States: a Mini-Symposium on Linear Algebra Education at ILAS 2026 (Virginia Tech, USA), the Dutch mathematics education research conference DREaM in Amsterdam, the UM Education Days in Maastricht, a workshop at the 54th SEFI Annual Conference in Prague, the ICAB Conference in Utrecht, and a poster at the 4TU+.AMI Education Day in 's-Hertogenbosch. We have also been invited to the 2027 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Chicago and the Nationale Wiskunde Dagen 2027.

See all conferences and events

If you use the Linear Algebra Card Game in your teaching or research, please cite the Open Educational Resource version using its persistent link: https://surfsharekit.nl/public/55397a29-594e-4aea-9ba3-8933b4cb479e