The Linear Algebra Card Game is one of eleven education innovation projects that received an EDLAB grant in 2025 and set to be integrated across multiple UM programmes and now also available as an Open Educational Resource (OER), freely available for any instructor to download, adapt, and (re)use.
The problem no textbook was solving
What do you do when students grasp individual concepts fine, but can’t see how they connect? For Martijn Boussé, Monica Salvioli and Phillippe Dreesen at UM’s Faculty of Science and Engineering, the answer was: make a game. And share it with the world.
Linear algebra can feel deceptively manageable lesson by lesson, then suddenly overwhelming when students need to see the bigger picture. As Monica explains, students often understand individual ideas (e.g. vector spaces, linear transformations, eigenvalues) but struggle to grasp how all these pieces fit together. Martijn describes the subject as a dense ‘spiderweb’ of interrelated concepts: students may learn individual procedures yet still struggle to explain how core ideas relate, e.g., how one property of a matrix influences another.
The real difficulty was not the first exposure to a concept. It was the consolidation phase; where students need to revisit, connect, and make sense of the whole. And that part is often the most tedious.
How it works and why it works
Players take turns placing cards into a shared grid and explaining, out loud, how their card connects to the ones already on the table. Other players judge the explanation. A solid mathematical justification earns you points; an incomplete one sends the card back to your hand. The game aligns naturally with Problem-Based Learning; it is constructive, collaborative, contextual, and student-driven.
One principle guided the design from the start: the mathematics itself should never be simplified. The cards contain precise definitions, theorems, and key examples. To earn points, students must verbalise their reasoning clearly and convince their peers. The rigor is not removed; it is made visible and social.
The results were striking.
“In the first week, the students really struggled, and I had to intervene a lot. But by week 4 they were playing autonomously, challenging each other, having high quality discussions, and making connections that I didn’t even see at first.” – Martijn Boussé
Monica noticed students spontaneously linking ideas taught weeks apart, without prompting; you could see the conceptual structure click.
Why they chose to share it openly
Once the game was working, the team knew they wanted to share it. For Monica, that decision followed naturally from the way the project had developed. From the beginning, it had been rooted in collaboration, both among colleagues and with students. Publishing it as an Open Educational Resource therefore felt like a natural extension of that spirit. As mathematicians, they are used to building on shared knowledge, and in her view teaching tools should follow the same principle.
There was no single turning point, Monica explains, but rather a growing awareness that the challenges they were addressing are not unique to Maastricht. Linear algebra is taught everywhere, and many instructors face similar difficulties in helping students connect abstract concepts. Making the game openly available allows others to adapt, improve, and experiment with it in their own contexts.
What followed the decision to publish openly was more than they expected. After sharing it with colleagues from other universities, the team was invited to present at the International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS) conference in the United States in a mini-symposium on linear algebra education. Openness did not just make the game more accessible; it made it visible, and opened doors a quietly-used classroom tool would never have opened.
Where UM Library came in
Publishing an OER involves real decisions: which license to use, how to make it findable, how to ensure it can be cited. That is where UM Library stepped in.
“The library made it almost effortless. They guided us on licensing, the options, the pros and cons. We could basically deliver the game to them, and they set everything up. This was amazing help.” – Philippe Dreesen
The library helped the team apply FAIR principles, made the game available on the Dutch national repository edusources and secured a DOI so the game could be formally cited. For Martijn it matters that the DOI makes the end product easier to share and find, and hence easier to have bigger and wider impact.
Your turn
Philippe offers straightforward advice to colleagues who are hesitant on sharing their learning materials openly. His advice: Start small. Share one activity, one assignment, one idea that worked well in your classroom. You don’t need a large, polished project to make a meaningful contribution. And you are not giving something away; you are joining a community of educators who learn from one another.
The library is here to help with exactly that. Whether it is choosing a license, getting a DOI, or just thinking through what sharing your materials could look like. One conversation is enough to get started.
The Linear Algebra Card Game is free, open, and available on edusources.
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