Manuscript received April 16, 2026; accepted September 23, 2026; published October 12, 2026.

Abstract—One approach to mathematics education conceptualizes mathematics as a form of game. Extensive research in mathematics education and pedagogy has examined game-based learning, focusing on instructional strategies and learners' cognitive processes. This approach requires relatively little prior mathematical knowledge, making it accessible to a wide range of learners and relatively easy for instructors to implement. In recent years, a new unit entitled "Mathematics in Games and Puzzles" has been introduced into the Japanese high school mathematics curriculum. This educational framework aims to deepen students' mathematical understanding through games and puzzles in a relaxed learning environment. In response, a variety of teaching materials and instructional designs have been developed, and their educational effectiveness has been examined from the perspectives of interdisciplinary collaboration and relevance to Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. Among such games, the Rubik's Cube is a representative example and can be used as teaching material for fostering and assessing mathematical thinking skills. Furthermore, digital versions of the Rubik's Cube have been proposed to enable the recording and analysis of manipulation processes. However, solving the Rubik's Cube using planar representations in the form of geometric nets can impose a greater cognitive load on learners. In this study, we focus on an application that supports operations on unfolded representations of the Rubik's Cube, propose a framework for data acquisition and methods for representing problems and solution processes, and examine the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
 
Keywords—Rubik's Cube, unfolded representation, educational application, operation log, mathematics education, STEAM

Cite: K. Kimura, K. Jinnai, A. Nakano, T. Ueda, D. Pramanta, and K. Matsuzaki, "Method and Verification of a Supporting Application for the Unfolded Version of the Rubik's Cube," International Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 306-311, 2026.

Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).