As Roblox grows it’s educational mission, we’re looking to showcase the best learning experiences with the Learn & Explore sort. This sort aims to help educators and parents find new ways to learn with Roblox. Across the world, thousands of educators and schools use Roblox to learn, inspire, and create. Will your experience become part of the classroom? Or inspire a career in science?
All experiences on the sort are submitted by applications which are reviewed by the Education team at Roblox. Below, we have the new criteria and recommendations for getting your work on the sort.
Submission Criteria
The experience explores a subject matter (science, history, etc) or has educational value that is clear to an educator.
No overly aggressive or pay-to-win monetization strategies. Monetization should not detract from learning or gameplay.
All experiences should be appropriate for a classroom for students of all ages (even if the subject matter is advanced). We will be critical highly critical of content such as violence.
Applicants (and their teams) must have a clean moderation check.
Experience should have a “Like” ratio above 50% and maintain at least 15 daily active users.
Recommendations
Experiences with diversity and inclusion, or a consideration for accessible design.
Connections to real world content, whether it’s facts on a sign, or game mechanics inspired by something you’d see in real life.
Ready to Submit?
Do you think you have an experience that can help people learn through Roblox? Submit it through this survey: Learn & Explore Sort Submissions.
If your experience is accepted into the sort, you should expect to hear back from us within 3 weeks from the time you submitted the experience.
FAQ
I’m in the sort! Now what?
Congrats! Educators, students, and parents around the world will be browsing the sort. Experiences additionally may be occasionally highlighted on Roblox Education channels, such as our website or Twitter.
How do I know the status of my application?
Because of the volume of applications, we cannot guarantee a response to an application. If you are accepted, we will contact you.
Is being on the sort permanent?
The sort will be rotated and refreshed occasionally to ensure fresh content. If your experience is to be removed, we’ll provide prior notice and an opportunity to re-apply in the future.
My application was rejected, but I still believe my experience has potential.
The Education team is glad to offer feedback for experiences on a case-by-case basis. For further questions, you can contact education@roblox.com.
What does this mean exactly? That at least 15 people join the game every day? Player peaks of approx 15 players every day? 15 actual regular players returning every day?
Very interesting change though, I might make an educational game just for fun if it gets exposure like this
All experiences should be appropriate for a classroom
I don’t believe teachers would ever use Roblox as a tool for educating students. The kids either already play it and will not pay attention, or they find it as a platform with games for “babies” and will also not pay attention.
That category is fun to explore on your own, but I don’t see it being used in an actual school
Or maybe I’m missing the point here, and it’s not about getting games in classrooms, but said games providing an educational atmosphere.
This is basically a check that at least 15 or so people join the experience a day (either returning or new) - mostly to ensure we don’t get abandoned projects.
Good luck with your projects! We’d like to see any new work people submit!
Does this mean if one team member has gotten a one day ban in the past (for something unrelated to the educational experience) the team will be forced to either exile the user from the team or not get in the sort? Sounds like a bad idea to include moderation history (which is unrelated to the users trust, since a wcammer could have a clean mod history if they are never caught) in the requirements.
I can understand the hesitancy in Roblox in the classroom. On the surface, it may not feel as a right “fit”. We do actually have thousands of educators already using Roblox to teach, for instance teaching kids Roblox Studio skills like coding. Since COVID hit - we’ve also seen a growing demand for experiences that are educational, like “virtual” field trips and the like. If you are curious, feel free to check out our Education page. We have stories from educators like ID Tech (summer camp) to a librarian using Roblox as a social space for her students.
What will happen if a game is dislike botted? Some major experiences have faced this issue but luckily for them, the issue was quickly reversed.
How will ROBLOX handle such a problem for smaller/less-known experiences?
I can envision an “educationally rigorious” experience which has legitimate value being disliked by players on the basis that it’s not ‘fun’. Will the “case-by-case” basis" decision take this into consideration, and if so, what additional criteria will be used here for evaluation, if any?
From what I am getting at this statement (it’s kinda vague, sorry if I am wrong), we can only really limit our monetization to cosmetics, which likely won’t get near as much sales.
I think that if above is the case we should get another form of compensation, maybe boosted premium payouts on that specific game while it is in the program?
It is encouraging that the staff at Roblox are promoting the ‘Learn and Explore’ listing once again. Speaking as an educator, I fully endorse the use of child-friendly platforms (such as Roblox) to support and develop the educational progress of young children. This is especially true in this digital age, especially as more learning has been moved online since the start of the Covid pandemic. Thank you to the Roblox staff for promoting this feature again.
However, there is one issue that the staff of Roblox really need to review and address: the application of retention criteria for any appropriate games to remain in the listing, once their submission has been deemed to be successful. Some developers may not be aware that Roblox will remove appropriate games from the ‘Look and Learn’ category, if their traffic figures do not meet specified predetermined targets. (I can give one example where a historical game1867 Historical Role Play - Roblox was included within the ‘Look and Learn’ category since it ideally met every criteria for inclusion but, sadly, it was withdrawn just four weeks later, with an explanation from the Roblox staff that it was removed as the traffic figures were not sufficient to warrant its retention.)
Although I appreciate that the use of traffic figures may be of use in the evaluation of listing games in popularity categories, there ought to be an exception to all educational submissions to the ‘Look and Learn’ category. If a game is ideally suited to be included in this category, it ought not to be removed a few weeks later, due to the fact that the overall traffic to that particular game did not meet specified predetermined targets. The reason is very simple: many youngsters are naturally bound to prefer games that involve action, first-person shooting activities, adventure and so on. Games that are seen to be too academic or ‘too similar’ to a school-based activity may not be deemed as exciting as other games that can be found upon the Roblox platform. Roblox staff should really accept that many educational games may never reach the same traffic ratings as popular games found elsewhere upon Roblox. If any game is assessed by Roblox staff and found to be ideally suited for inclusion in the ‘Look and Learn’ category – it ought be appreciated that its subsequent traffic may often be lower than other popular games and this fact should not be a deciding factor in subsequently removing that game from the listing. This should be applied for all submissions to the ‘Look and Learn’ category.
FINALLY, AN IMPROVEMENT TO GAME DISCOVERY! WAY TO GO ROBLOX!!!
THANK YOU for finally cracking down on pay to win games! These monetization strategies are destroying the platform and you need to make more improvements to your algorithm to prevent these games from becoming popular.
You can do donations. This is what I see a lot of educational games do.
Applicants (and their teams) must have a clean moderation check.
you should remove this criteria, most people have stupid warnings from a few months/years ago
This is amazing. I’m very happy Roblox is doing this. It really allows Roblox developers to get their game out there and allow for the possibility for their game to get on the front page for educators.
Does clean me nothing on it? Or does to it mean its minor (such as less than 5 warnings and are from uploading decals and images?
So we actually look at each applicant individually, it’s not an automated response. So in that case, if one person in a team has an issue in moderation, we’ll just be taking a further look and talk about that openly with the team. We don’t want to discourage anyone from submitting.
Question regarding this, will the old applications sent in be checked? Our group has been applying for Learn and Explore for about a year now, our user base has applied and our creator has applied as well. Though we never got a response back on any of the applications. Our game which is Pinewood Computer Core fits into all the requirements so we think.
The experience is primarily based on scientific ideology.
Our gamepasses don’t seem overly aggressive in our opinion.
Our game is appropriate for all ages and is moderated by our moderation team.
Our creator has a clean moderation history and has been involved in other Roblox sections, (The game was on the rthro section when that existed and was also in the Metaverse Champions)
Our experience has a like ratio above 50% and has a usual 100-150 to even 200 players daily.
Should we reapply since the rules have changed? We recently sent in another application.
I can highly agree. Especially with the game you mentioned, it looked like a lot of effort was poured into it all just to be taken down from the list weeks later.
I believe Roblox should keep the games that make it onto the list, and show the most popular, most liked, or officially featured by Roblox ones on the front page. Similar to how the Popular list works, with the “See All” button providing a somewhat endless results of games, tiered in (as the name suggests) popularity. I don’t see how doing so will cause problems in the Learn & Explore category, as I’d suggest it would do the total opposite.
Make Roblox education edition, where district admins can approve certain experiences from the millions on Roblox.
This is what is done with the Chrome Webstore and the chrome suit. Instead of disproving the many extensions, admins can just approve the ones they think are useful.
Just an idea… this would get Roblox used more, because schools are strict on moderation. No school is going to allow anyone to install classic Roblox where students can play Arsenal and Adopt me all day…