EMC² Learning

Engagement at the speed of life

Gamification is hot! But beneath the bells and whistles, most gamified solutions are no more than 21st century Scantrons. We think students deserve better than mindless button mashing, and we help teachers learn a better way to play. At EMC² Learning, we built a platform of more than 600 fully editable resources. There are no dinky worksheets, no crass simulations, and no low level guessing games.

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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

Gamified Curricula

Web presence

2021

Established

500K

Children

7

Countries

Target group

Teachers

Updated

June 2023

Our goal is to help teachers learn how to build instructional capacity by using gamified instructional techniques and game inspired course design. Our resources help educators develop the comfort and confidence necessary to make regular use of student-centered, feedback focused engagement strategies in their lesson plans as they make their classrooms more inclusive, playful, and rewarding for all.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Research consistently shows that traditional teacher PD simply does not work. But educators are constantly told to make their classrooms more engaging, and so they naturally turn to the nearest port in the storm and end up with a glut of low-level online guessing games. Authentic gamification is incredibly powerful, and we created a platform to help teachers learn how to use it in their classes.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Our on-demand library provides teachers to an expanding collection of 600+ instructional activities, each of which is fully editable for any course or content area. Each resource includes a detailed write up, scaffolding suggestions, and instructional videos as necessary - and is designed to build teacher capacity as they make the shift to a more playful, student-centered manner of instruction.

How has it been spreading?

We serve a membership community of more than 6,500 paid members. We have secured annual contracts with more than one dozen districts and schools. Our member retention rate is upwards of 85% annually, and we won the FETC Pitchfest in the category of Best Online Courses. We now offer 600+ resources. Our goal is to double the number of resources and number of paid members in the next three years.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

We offer three tiers of membership. Tinker Teachers enjoy free access to a curated collection of resources to get a feel for how our site works. Engagement Engineers pay an annual fee, and have access to 600+ resources plus the full library of more than a dozen self-paced skill-builder video courses. Creative Corps members unlock all these features and 30+ live virtual coaching sessions each year.

Impact & scalability

HundrED Academy Reviews

I am using such activities for my own workshops. Can testify the simplicity yet profoundness of the Experiential learning that has been used here.

The group seems to be very effective at designing activities that are accessible for a lot of teachers and are clearly getting real world traction. It is helpful that it appears to be teacher designed for teachers.

- Academy member

Academy review results

Impact

Scalability

Exceptional

High

Moderate

Limited

Insufficient

Exceptional

High

Moderate

Limited

Insufficient

Implementation steps

Step 1: Browse The EMC² Learning Library

After creating an account, teachers unlock immediate access to our full host of more than 600 fully editable classroom resources. Unlike most other turnkey sites where teachers search by subject matter or content area standard, our entire platform is organized based on where it best fits into a teacher’s existing workflow. Our platform teaches pedagogical shifts, and offer resources in familiar categories ranging from warm-up activities, to review games, to end-of-unit assessment ideas.

Step 2: Explore The Resource Of Your Choice

Once a teacher has found the category that most directly suits their instructional goals, they can click the resource of their choice to learn more -- just like Netflix. Each resource likewise has a dedicated page with step-by-step instructions and instructional videos, which gives teachers the power to make one-to-one substitutions directly at their pain points: trading out traditional teacher talk in favor of more playful and purposeful student-centered instructional techniques at every turn.

Step 3: Add An Activity to Your Teacher Repertoire

Every resource inside of the EMC² Learning platform likewise comes with a fully editable activity template to help teachers quickly put that activity in play in their classroom. With the push of a button, a local copy of any resource from our library can automatically be added to a teacher's Google Drive -- giving them the ability to make whatever adjustments they might need in a sort of private, final staging area before they deploy the activity into their next student-centered lesson plan.