Game Based Learning (GBL) and the blended classroom have become increasingly popular instructional options as teachers strive to improve teaching and learning. These two instructional forms complement each other well. Both serve the 21st century classroom by engaging students in their education and giving them opportunities to develop not only basic curriculum mastery but also critical thinking and problem solving skills.

GBL uses games to aid students’ learning. Although GBL can drastically transform instruction, as in the case of using World of Warcraft to teach humanities, GBL can be as simple as playing Jeopardy to review materials before summative assessment. Both applications involve games to complement or replace more traditional instructional methods, such as lectures, Q&As, and worksheets.

Most teachers employ some form of GBL. However, we must be careful not to confuse GBL with gamification. In gamification, a teacher incorporates the mechanics of game play and game design into the curriculum. Teachers who espouse GBL take a very different approach. They infuse the curriculum with games, and the games become primary methods to introduce, explore, explain, and reinforce material.

What Is Blended Learning?

Game Based Learning & Blended Learning In Practice

GBL fits seamlessly into a blended instructional model. Games can act as bridges between the physical, face-to-face environment and an online classroom in at least three ways.

Independent Game Play Outside Of Class

First, a student could play games independently, outside the regular class time and setting. Sites like Quizizz and Quizlet have popularized this method. For this to be successful, teachers must possess some way to track student progress and learning. This usually occurs in the form of tracking time spent on the game and assessing students’ answers and feedback to questions.

Teachers Meeting With Students Virtually

Second, a teacher could meet with students in a virtual environment. Examples of such environments include Minecraft: Education Edition and Second Life. With this method, the teacher schedules a time to meet in a virtual space within the game. Students and teacher are therefore in different places but meeting at the same time. The mode of instruction varies depending on the virtual environment and game limitations. A lecture is possible in Second Life, for example, but not Minecraft.

Students Meeting & Playing Together In A Game Environment

Third, a student could meet and play with other students in a game environment without teacher supervision. The situation arises when students are assigned collaborative Minecraft projects or asked to compete against other students in some games found on ABCya!.

Benefits Of Game-Based Learning In Blended Learning Classrooms

GBL perfectly suits a blended classroom framework. With it, teachers meet students’ expectations—today’s students already “game” with other students. Teachers also overcome challenges found with typical homework assignments and assessments.

Games can reduce testing anxiety and increase student motivation to engage and learn. In fact, some teachers see students playing games outside of class sheerly for the joy of it. For those reasons and many more, game based learning will become a more common mode of instruction that extends learning beyond the classroom.

Scott Beiter teachers science at Rensselaer Jr. Sr. High in Rensselaer, New York. Follow his blog, Full Sail Science, to learn more.

The following is an excerpt from our new white paper, “Eight Steps to Successfully Implement Blended Learning in Your Classroom.” Download it today!

Do you ever find yourself leaving school at the end of the day thinking you could have taught your lesson just a little bit better? It is very natural as a teacher to take stock of your day and think about adjustments you can make for tomorrow. What if you could use tools like games to make a large scale change to your classroom that would lead to much higher levels of engagement and achievement? You can, and blended learning is the 21st century key to this kind of change.

Getting Your Classroom Ready For Blended Learning

You might be wondering how can you transform your classroom with a blended learning model? After all, the possibilities with tech based learning — middle school science games (hint, hint) — can be truly infinite given the right strategies.

Time To Rearrange The Desks

Whether you have a cart of iPads or a room full of Chromebooks, integrating technology into your classroom is a great way to engage students in learning. One facet, the classroom setup, is often overlooked. It might seem that just putting technology on the desk in place of a textbook will improve a student’s experience and engagement, but research has found otherwise.

Says Ramona Persaud, Edutopia contributor, “From the front door and school grounds to the classroom, the aesthetics of learning spaces impact brain function and influence how students feel when they’re in school—as well as how they feel about their school.”

You likely understand Persaud’s point intuitively. Students perform better when they feel comfortable, safe, and feel as though they belong. You might even have anecdotal evidence demonstrating the impact of something as simple as a desk arrangement. If classroom setup is instrumental in determining the success of your blended learning model, try something a little out of the box next year. Get a bunch of chairs and a couch and have your students use them during blended learning time. No room in the budget for furniture? No problem! Let students sit on the floor. Students simply do not have to be sitting at a desk in order to be engaged in learning.

Seven Ways To Set Up Your Class For Success

Check out this great list of recommendations from Blended Learning Universe on how to arrange your classroom for Blended Learning.

• Station Rotation – moves students from station to station on a fixed schedule, with at least one (if not all) of the stations featuring digital learning activities such as games, puzzles, or videos. The rotation can free up teaching time, allowing you to work one-on-one with students needing extra attention.
• Lab Rotation – looks similar to Station Rotation except that students go to a dedicated computer lab rather than an in-classroom station. Many teachers enjoy the flexibility of using an outside lab in terms of both scheduling and classroom layouts.
• Individual Rotation – provides students with personalized schedules and assignments. The students may or may not visit every work station in a single day, instead focusing their attention on completing assigned activities.
• Flipped Classroom – changes the classroom dynamic. Students learn at home via a digital curriculum and online lectures. They then complete teacher-guided projects and other activities in the classroom.
• Flex – gives the most control to students. It allows them to move through classroom curriculum and activities — both digital and traditional — on a fluid schedule. Teachers, in turn, offer support and instruction as needed. This model tends to use online learning to a greater degree than the previous four.
• A La Carte – allows schools to offer electives they can’t provide due to a lack of on-site resources. The model often supplements high school classes.
• Enriched Virtual – requires students to learn at home via online instructional materials and meet with a teacher face-to-face two to three times a week. This model tends to be less common than the other six.

No matter which approach you choose, remember that bringing blended learning into the classroom is a chance to approach student learning in a new way. Do something new this year with your class and get excited for a transformational 2017-2018 school year!!!

Try Our Games With Your Blended Learning Model

One of the best ways to get your classroom ready with a blended learning model is by using our online educational games here at Legends of Learning. For more information, give us a call at 888.585.1317 or contact us online today.

Don’t forget to download the new white paper, “Eight Steps to Successfully Implement Blended Learning in Your Classroom.”

Legends of Learning has decided to support the March for Science this weekend in Washington, DC by providing science teachers capes to march in. We will be at the NSTA rally handing out capes to interested science teachers. Our stance is that while science research has become politicized (and arguably has been since the days of Copernicus), it should not be political.

We believe in questioning, curiosity, and using data to guide decision making. This discipline of research to explore new ideas is the foundation of the human spirit, of learning, and yes, scientific progress.

Our founder, Vadim Polikov, Ph.D., was a research scientist at Duke University and has many scientific publications to his name. His first business was an academic editing business helping researchers around the world publish their research in peer reviewed science journals. He started Legends of Learning only after conducting a rigorous study to determine the efficacy of curricula games.

Our first cohort of customers are science teachers. These are the very people who seek to inspire their students — America’s Youth — with that same sense of curiosity, and a commitment to find truth through data and facts. How can we not support the spirit of science this Earth Day?

If you are attending the march in Washington, DC, our CMO Geoff Livingston will be out and about with a backpack full of capes looking for Legends of Learning and NSTA science teachers who want to have a little fun with their science support activities. He will be manning the @legendlearning Twitter handle that day. Tweet at him to meet up and get your own Legends of Learning cape for the march.

We are thrilled to launch our game-based learning platform with more than 700 curriculum-based games for middle school earth and space science, life sciences, and physical science curricula. The science games, created by over 300 games developers, are based on rigorous academic research conducted in partnership with Vanderbilt University.

In preparation for the platform launch, Legends of Learning involved more than 500 teacher ambassadors from across the country. Their participation will ultimately build a library of 700 games by the end of spring, with more games in different subjects and grades underway. The games and platform have benefitted from direct feedback by Legends of Learning’s teacher ambassador community, resulting in games ideally suited for the challenges of today’s learning environments.

Teachers communicated directly with and provided recommendations to game developers from such well-known game studios as Schell Games, Filament Games, North South Studios, Second Avenue Learning, and Intellijoy. Legends of Learning will continue to engage with educators about their needs and insights in an effort to keep games fresh and exciting for students.

“I have been teaching science for 14 years and never have I seen a company listen to teachers and incorporate feedback like Legends of Learning has,” said Scott Beiter, a veteran science teacher from Rensselaer, New York, and Legends of Learning teacher ambassador. “It is hard to find a platform that is easy-to-use and integrates into what I am already teaching, but Legends of Learning has created one for middle school science.”

Legends of Learning founder and CEO Vadim Polikov, a research scientist, believes that research is the foundation for successful game-based learning and long-term educational reform. The soon-to-be-released controlled study in partnership with Vanderbilt University, “Substantial Integration of Typical Educational Games into Extended Curricula,” measured the performance of more than 1,000 students in seven states and in schools with differing student bodies, socioeconomic factors, and geographical locations. The study demonstrated statistically significant success, showing that academic performance and engagement increase with curriculum aligned game-based learning.

Some unique aspects of the Legends of Learning game-based learning platform include:

• Short games (5-15 minutes) that align to middle school science curriculum standards to ensure content engages and helps students succeed in their studies;
• An intuitive platform similar to Netflix and Amazon that makes games easy and natural to use in classrooms; and
• A dashboard that allows teachers to observe student comprehension in real time, create game playlists for classes and individual students, and assess content mastery.

“I firmly believe in using original academic research to test the efficacy of new education products while at the same time making sure the classroom implementation is incredibly easy for educators,” said our CEO Vadim Polikov. “Working with a wide range of teachers and game developers has allowed us to build a unique platform that will be easy for educators to integrate and use in their classrooms.”

Teachers interested in being part of the Legends of Learning Ambassador program should visit legendsoflearning.com/teachers. We are showcasing our platform and games at booth #2217 at the National Science Teachers Association’s National Conference in Los Angeles, March 30-April 2.

A version of this story was issued as a press release on PRWeb this morning. Interested parties can see the games on the Legends of Learning platform.

Caitlin Unterman (see her DonorsChoose Page here) is and 8th Grade Earth Science and Science Exploration at Forest Middle School in the Bedford County School District. She also partners with NASA to deliver a class in her school.

Caitlin is also one of the first teachers demoing the Legends of Learning platform. She shares her insights with Aryah and new co-host Sean Reidy about game based learning, NASA, the Legends of Learning platform, and much more.

Blended learning offers amazing benefits to the classroom, with ISTE reporting it meets many of the organization’s Standards for Students and Teachers and leads to a “more rigorous, challenging, engaging, and thought-provoking classroom.” While true, blending learning has to be implemented correctly to provide engagement and teach classroom lessons.

In its simplest definition, blended learning integrates digital content, like Legends of Learning educational games (edgames), with face-to-face learning. The more technical definition says blended learning integrates digital content with traditional teaching methods; typically requires the physical presence of the teacher and students in a classroom; and gives the student some control over their time, space, and learning path and pace.

27 Blended Learning Tips When Setting Up Your Classroom

To create a blended learning classroom, use some or all of the following 27 tips. The tips can be categorized into three areas: planning, implementation, and improvement. As such, you should find a relevant suggestion for wherever you are in the blended learning journey.

1. Redefine Your Role In The Classroom

You, the teacher, perform a critical part in encouraging deeper learning. However, the role is evolving, particularly in blended learning environments. TNTP, a nonprofit organization dedicated to positive change in public schools, says teachers who employ blended learning should learn to see themselves as people with three distinct responsibilities. These include research and development, integration, and guidance. The three responsibilities may be owned by an individual teacher or shared amongst a team.

2. Start With A Description Of The Curriculum

Writing down what the next two weeks or semester will cover often identifies learning goals, objectives, and outcomes. The description also ensures your familiarity with the curriculum content and helps pinpoint potential digital resources, such as edgames, online quizzes, and videos.

3. Outline Your Goals

Goals strip a curriculum description of the fluff, leaving you with a clear focus and targets to hit.

4. Determine Learning Objectives

Learning objectives quantify goals. Set these so that you can measure classroom and student performance in real time and at the end of a learning block.

5. Define Learning Outcomes

Outcomes define how students will achieve objectives and demonstrate competency in the subject matter. Specific outcomes could include classroom participation, online assignments, oral presentations, et cetera.

6. Choose A Blended Learning Model

Once you have a clear picture of what you want to teach and desire students to achieve, you can choose a blended learning model. The common models number six: face-to-face driver, rotation, flex, online-only, self-blend, and online-driver. Most of the models contain nuances. For example, the rotation model spans rotation stations, lab rotations, and individual rotations. Another common model includes the flipped classroom, in which online content and instruction is delivered online and at home. Students then come to a brick-and-mortar school for in-classroom projects and practice. Some teachers use one or more models to make their classroom content more engaging and rigorous.

7. Explore Different Teaching Methods To Complement The Model

Different models and teaching roles sometimes mean changing up your teaching methods. Some blended learning classrooms, for instance, use team teaching.

8. Use The Right Technology Tools

Software changes often, so it’s important to set down the fixed matters first. Goals, learning objectives and outcomes, blended learning models, and instructional methods should dictate the technology choice, not the other way around. In addition, remember that you may need more than one tool. Students learn differently and have unique needs. It’s unlikely that one edgame or digital resource will work well for all.

9. Aim For Relevance & Fun, Not One Or The Other

This tip relates to technology in that the tool should be relevant AND fun. That is, the digital content should complement learning objectives and achieve outcomes. If it doesn’t, the tool is irrelevant and ineffectual. The tool, though, also needs to be fun. Students won’t use a tool they don’t like.

10. Design The Classroom As A Blended Learning Environment

Layout and aesthetics affect student morale and the ability to learn. Plus, if you use a specific learning model, you may need to move desks and chairs around. You don’t necessarily have to do the work on your own; Mark Philips, a teacher and educational journalist, notes in an Edutopia article that student involvement in classroom design and layout can “empower them, develop community, and increase motivation.”

11. Know The Traditional & Online Content

To build trust with students, you need to know the content inside and out. This means revisiting the curriculum content, as well as testing digital content and edgames. You want tools that cement knowledge, lead to application and critical thinking, and motivate learning, not ones that sabotage your efforts or frustrate students.

12. Create Individual & Collective Learning Goals

You established overarching learning goals earlier. Now, combine them with individual learning goals. Students work at different paces and may be on another learning path than another student. Learn to incorporate that information into your blended learning planning to see success with students and the classroom as a whole.

13. Develop A Classroom Culture That Embraces Blended Learning

Esther Wojcicki shares her process for creating a blended learning culture in the book “Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom.” She uses the acronym “TRICK,” which stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. With those values embedded in the classroom, students want to learn, grow, and help out their teacher and classmates.

14. Set Expectations

Students achieve when given goals, so set expectations. Let them know how to succeed in the classroom and at home, and they will.

15. Share An Overview Of Classroom Activities, Projects, Playlists & Outside Resources

With overall expectations set, share daily and weekly assignments. The process might not look all that different from standard homework tasks except that they involve online content and opportunities for in-classroom game play. Sharing additional resources for study can be a good idea, too, especially if you claim a couple of high performers or students who need to skip around assignments to stay engaged with the classroom content.

16. Provide Clear Instructions & Routines For Game Play

Students need to know to log out of an application and turn off computers or tablets before moving to a different classroom activity. The specificity is important; students probably don’t have to log out at home, so they won’t think to do it in the classroom.

17. Give Students Control Over Time, Path, Place & Pace

It can be hard to relinquish control, but students excel when given the chance to direct their learning. They become more engaged with the content because they have a personal stake in their success.

18. Encourage Collaboration In The Classroom & Online

Collaboration gives students the chance to work through complex concepts and to help each other learn. It also offers opportunities for dialogue, which teaches students to position their points with facts and hard evidence. Collaboration should occur in the classroom and online; quieter students, for example, could become extremely vocal online. If you need more reasons to employ collaborative learning, the Global Development Research Center lists 44 of them.

19. Incite Curiosity, Imagination & Critical Thinking

Students start wondering and thinking when you ask, “What if?” You can raise that question through traditional teaching methods and online content. And, the more you ask open-ended and thought-provoking questions, the more students will seek out answers.

20. Challenge Students To Learn & Grow With Authentic, Relevant Tasks

Nothing’s worse than busy work, and even a fifth grader has an antenna finely attuned to it. Give students real, curriculum-based, challenging assignments, and they’ll complete and compete to finish them.

21. Review Classroom & Online Content Regularly

Online content supplements other teaching tools. As such, you should go over both pieces of content to ensure students’ basic comprehension and deeper understanding.

22. Measure Individual & Classroom Progress

Blended learning leads to real impact when it’s measured. The work should be fairly easy to do since you already decided on goals, objectives, and outcomes. The Legends of Learning edgame platform simplifies the work further, providing real-time performance reports via an easy-to-use dashboard. Combine its information with your grade book to track and assess progress.

23. Analyze Classroom Impact To Balance Traditional Teaching Time & Student Game Play

Every classroom is different, so take some time to find the right balance of traditional teaching methods and digital media. Many Legends of Learning teachers start with a 50/50 blend and work from there.

24. Identify New Goals & Objectives And Repeat

Once you measure progress and impact, you may discover that learning goals need to change. That’s a good thing. Goals should change over time. However, that change means you’ll need to continually adjust teaching methods and digital content to see continued success with blended learning.

25. Communicate With Everyone

A blended learning classroom requires communication with everyone—students, professional peers, administrators, and parents. Blending learning works best when everybody shares a belief in the vision for it.

26. Remember The Parents

On a related note, not all of your parents will get technology or edgames. They may work multiple jobs to make ends meet, so they don’t have time to learn how the internet works. Help them out with an evening class or individual meetings. By interacting with them on a personal level, you’ll see interest, buy-in, and participation grow at home and in the classroom.

27. Be Patient

Finally, remember that it takes time to succeed with blended learning. Don’t give up if you don’t see the results you want within the next two weeks. Blended learning works if you’ll just be patient with it a little while longer.

Try Blended Learning With Our Online Educational Games!

Ready to start your heroic journey into blended learning? Try these 27 tips, then check out what you can do in the classroom with the Legends of Learning platform! Have any tips to add? Please add them in the comments section.

View Our Science & Math Games

Learn More About Remote Learning

Two of our strongest ambassadors in the community are Rebecca and Scott Beiter. This husband and wife tandem teach at two different school districts in upstate New York.

They share their insights on game based learning and what it is like to help Legends of Learning build its games and platforms from ground zero to market launch. In addition, Rebecca and Scott share the story of how they both got into teaching science, and the teacher conference life. Enjoy this super fun podcast!

Jon Ridgeway is CEO and Creative Director of Rebourne Studios. Rebourne is one of the Legends of Learning developers building science games for grades 6-8 in the United States. We took time to sit down with Jon, and learn more about his ethos on developing great games for the education space.

Our conversations spanned what makes a great game, why they work in education environments, and some of Rebourne’s approach to building games. Give our latest podcast a listen, and meet Jon!

Considering joining the Legends of Learning community of teachers and developers? We need help from middle school science teachers who are willing to comment on our games. Ambassadors who sign up by March 1, and provide feedback to our developers get free access to games. The most qualified Ambassadors earn an opportunity to attend ISTE this June 26-29 in San Antonio.

This is your opportunity to shape the Legends of Learning platform and games from the ground floor. When you sign up for our community, you let your voice be heard and make a difference not only in your classroom, but for educators across America!

Your input on individual learning objectives is used by the Legends of Learning team and our game developers to improve our collective offering. You can directly impact how kids learn thru games, join forces with like-minded heroes to review and strengthen the Legends of Learning platform and the individual games.

We want to reward teachers who are active in our network, and provide you free games for your classroom. Just for signing up for a community you get 3000 credits to use the games in your classroom!

Further participation in our community garners you more credits to continue playing and some crazy rewards, too. The 50-100 teachers who are most active in the community and agree to participate in our next major research study will attend ISTE — the premier education professional development conference — on our dollar (an up to $2,000 value that includes registration, travel, and lodging)!

Here’s how it works:

1) Adopt a Learning Objective as your very own: 100 credits
2) Adopt a second (third, fourth…?) Learning Objective as your very own: 200 credits
3) Answer questions in the community: 20 points for answers, badges given at 1, 5, 25, and 50 answers for 10, 100, 500, 1000 credits respectively.
4) Provide feedback and comment: 10 points for commenting, badges given at 1, 10, 50, and 100 comments for 10, 100, 500, 1000 credits respectively.

You can also receive points for adding an avatar, connecting and sharing on Twitter and Facebook, referencing others in conversations, and receiving positive feedback from your peers. Finally, agreeing to participate in research and attend ISTE will both garner you an additional 1000 points.

The fastest way to get ahead in the community is to adopt a Learning Objective (part of our community application), and work with our developers to improve games within that series of lessons. By taking ownership of specific lessons taught in classes, you will answer questions, comment and interact by default. You will also help make Legends of Learning a better platform for all educators. Now that is truly heroic.

Not that a hero needs more motivation, but those whose exploits are truly legendary will receive t-shirts, Pez heads, or other Legends of Learning swag. We might even write your avatar into a game as your very own super hero character!

So what are you waiting for, Legend? Sign up today, and help make game based learning even better in our community today!

In the post-truth era, American society has come to devalue intellectualism. Twitter wars and opining about “alternative” facts take precedence. This lack of commitment to reason and knowledge doesn’t merely turn adults into pessimists and skeptics with the attention span of goldfish. It affects students, too, and their ability to reason and discover what is true.

Without a genuine hunger for knowledge, today’s students will struggle to discern actionable information in their preferred fields of study and careers. That is true regardless of a region, state, or family’s politics. The hallmark of education is teaching students to use knowledge and thought to reason their way to conclusions.

But how can educators inspire intellectualism in a time of deep mistrust in public discourse?

Perhaps the top method is to combat boredom in the classroom with engagement. Note the word: engagement. It’s not entertainment. The distinction is critical. Students need to learn, not to be amused. You can have both in the same environment, but entertainment is not and must never be the primary objective.

“We need to get away from thinking that the opposite of ‘bored’ is ‘entertained,'” says  said Todd Rose, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’07, a lecturer at the Ed School and director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard University. “It’s ‘engaged.’” Successful education is not about pumping cartoons and virtual reality games into the classroom; it’s about finding ways to make curriculum more resonant, personalized, and meaningful for every student.

Engagement as a Precursor

With engagement, a true interest in pursuing knowledge develops. Lea Taylor and Jim Parson note note several forms of engagement in an article published on Arizona State University’s Current Issues in Education.:

• Academic
• Cognitive
• Intellectual
• Institutional
• Emotional
• Behavioral
• Social
• Psychological

While a variety of pedagogical techniques — including blended learning, problem-based learning, and, yes, game-based-learning — may inspire some forms of engagement, not all of them are guaranteed. Fostering intellectualism in students is a by-product of the right conditions. One thing is clear: Engagement, curiosity, and interest are precursors of successful learning.

Engagement Stimulates Learning and Curiosity

And learning is the point. It’s one of the reasons Legends of Learning ties curriculum to its edgames and focuses on shorter games. It’s hard to deliver an engaging experience that survives classroom interruptions. But when students engage in a meaningful experience, no matter how short, their interest in school subjects can grow.

That interest can lead to deeper understanding and application, what Dr. Mike Davis of the Colorado Academy terms “intellectual curiosity.” Students grasp what they know and use it to comprehend new concepts. Fostering curiosity through the exploration of new and unresolved situations, i.e., games, can be a tremendous spark for children, as well one in which both teachers and parents can participate.

“But what about those test scores?” you ask.

Engagement comes to the rescue here, too. The quality of engagement can also improve retention. “If the students are interested and inspired to think about things for prolonged periods, then memory is enhanced,” says Ben Johnson, an administrator. Engagement wins again and provides yet another reason to build blended classrooms that integrate teacher-led activities with engaging exercises and games.

Will an engaged classroom become an intellectual one? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it certainly brings us one step closer towards helping students think and reason for themselves.