Not to be Overlooked
It should not be understated that Roblox isn’t just a game hosting site, but a site for game creation. Often misunderstood as nothing more than a children’s game or hosting site, Roblox’s game engine seems to be swept under the rug by many outside of it’s entertainment demographic. Roblox’s game engine is a free to use game development software tool engineered to be simplistic enough for a child to use. According to a video released by the site itself on The Story of Roblox, it’s engine, physics, and scripting languages were intentionally designed this way to allow children to learn and experiment with it. With further moves to push Roblox educationally in the future, like in their 2021 blog post on Roblox Education, the site aims to restate itself as a limitless tool for potential learning, with many young minds fostering passions for game development, and learning to code with creativity through it as their driving force.
What this means for us as educators is that its software is not only surprisingly easy to use and learn, but also features no cost to use, and hosts incredibly user-friendly methods for game construction that even the least tech savvy of us teachers can use. If given the chance, Roblox can be an invaluable tool for education, and it’s clear that the goals of the site can line up with our own in this. Through simple game creation for evaluating student understandings within class, while also maintaining student attention and interest, creating a Roblox game for your students to use may actually be a great change of pace for your room. Games such as the simplistic multiple choice questionnaire can be played at home, or as a class by students, and from my own experience using them as test prep, students are more receptive to it’s game-like nature, and will seemingly ask more questions on average to understand how to finish the game.
Conceptualization and My Experience
I remember during a late night conversation with a behavioral therapist from out of state, the concept of Roblox and it’s use in education was brought to my attention. When discussing rewards and the methods for working one on one with a child, I was told that as a reward, some children’s parents permitted them to be given time to play Roblox on a tablets or phones after their sessions. The colorful nature of it’s games, and child based demographic of the site attracted a host of games many children found entertaining. As I’m told by this behavioral therapist, the children she worked with who were allowed this permission would often resist or see no interest in traditional methods of one-on-one instruction and therapy but will happily engage in playing Roblox as their reward. As a previous user of the Roblox site myself, I could understand why such would be the case, but I began to wonder if rather than have Roblox simply be the reward, Roblox could instead assist in the learning itself.
Coming to this conclusion, I decided to invest some time into conceptualizing ways in which Roblox could be used for personalized educational means. Many games on the site are geared towards entertainment, and there were very few places to draw inspiration from initially, but with a little bit of creativity, I came up with a simple and easily replicable game of multiple choice.
I started with a very simple door concept, where basic blocks were stretched and duplicated to form a wall with multiple doors and doorways attached to it. After setting up this framework, I looked up how to write text on the side of blocks, and started to overlay the text through the “Text Surface GUI” feature. It seemed complicated at the time, but it really was just an easy copy paste process once I did it once. I came up with a basic math problem, set the door with the right answer to allow the player through with a single button press, and set the other doors to lower player health to zero with a borrowed script from an obstacle course game on the website.
This was a good start, and did serve it’s intended purpose, but as my students, and the students of the behavioral therapist were much younger, I had to figure out some better ways to create questions that wouldn’t “eliminate” the player by reducing their health. It was then that I came up with a much more safer idea, that actually used no scripting whatsoever, and made my life much easier for it.
This next concept is the one I’ve stuck with so far and is one I’d recommend to other educators from how it functions the same way as the previous one, still allowing for multiple choice questions to be answered, and still has risk for failure, but the risk is minimized with a system of safe forgiveness.
In short, instead of having the doors, I settled on paths. The correct path, tied to the correct choice, would secretly be a solid object. The incorrect paths would appear to be solid, but when the player steps on them, they would fall through to a floor safely below. From there, they can simply walk back around to the ramp to continue but can’t go further into the game or skip questions from the walls that block the ground. I later would add some color, relevant decorations, and duplicate the frame to make new questions. Then, all that needed to be done was to edit the text, and boom! I had myself an easy to make, child friendly, educational Roblox game.
Use in the Classroom:
Making the game was one thing, but it’s effectiveness was another. I still had to test the waters and see if this was something I could reasonably use within a classroom. There were a couple of initial hurdles to overcome with it, but There’s generally an equitable way to go about it for most school buildings, as with my own.
Problems and How to Solve Them
The first issue was that I had to get the game itself to the school. To do that, I created a Roblox account specifically for education, and uploaded the file containing my game to it’s account. I published the game privately to the website, and kept the account information, and a link to the game on hand. This made sure the game existed somewhere online that I could access.
Then was the issue of running the game, which I conceived a few solutions for in the realm of technology. Roblox is a very versatile platform, and can be played on phones, tablets, iPads, and etc. It can also run on the common school Chromebook computer, with potential for as many students as there are Chromebooks to play the game from their seats. As my school did not have this as an option, I brought in a MacBook laptop from home.
With just a single computer alone however, it wasn’t reasonable to say that everyone in the room would be able to see the screen or even be able to read the questions. That’s where the next solution of a TV cart, and HDMI cable comes in. an HDMI cable can be used to send the screen of a computer or other device to a secondary screen, and when done with a laptop and TV, the image is enlarged, and depending on where you place the TV, is now viewable to the entire room.
The last potential issues were one I didn’t have to deal with in the building I taught at, but I feel I should be mentioned as I understand others might come across these issues. Depending on the school you may work in, there may be some issues of Roblox on a potential blocked websites list, and issues of getting approval to use the site’s game as part of an official lesson plan. With proper permissions, however, there should still be work arounds for each of these.
Discussions with someone of higher position within your school, and a showcase of what has been can be done with this technology may help circumvent Wi-Fi issues with either a single device site exemption, or with the option to use an alternate Wi-Fi network without blocks if available.
In the realm of permissions, this may need to be discussed to differing degrees depending on what you plan to do with these educational games. For example, for my group, I had each student take turns answering one question on the computer. For this, you can simply have the Wi-fi on this specific device be able to allow access to the site, or the game. In larger groups with a class full of chrome books however, this may not be the case, and additional permissions may be required.
How to Make your Own Educational Game
Step 1
Make a Roblox Account and Download Roblox Studio
The first step of creating one of these games comes from downloading the software, and signing up with an account.
- Signing up for the site can be done from here.
- Downloading the software for the Roblox game engine (Roblox Studio) can be found here.
Remember! You must have an account before you download Roblox Studio. Even if you have previously had an account, I would recommend creating a new one, as this account should be entirely based within education.
Step 2
Creating the Game / Learning the Basics
Creating a game on Roblox is something that is generally easy enough for a child to do, and because of this, its tools are daily straightforward in their purpose. There are various tutorials online on how to get started, with very generous instructions that can help those with very little to no technological experience in game creation, like in this video here. This video however, is one that is geared towards younger children, and has a bit of an interesting editing style that may seem a bit strange while viewing. The information within it however far surpasses the slight uncomfortability of the tutorial’s jokes and edits.
While I recommend experimenting with various tools, and taking time when trying to make a game, as an educator,, I understand that there is not always enough time in the day to do these things. So whether you choose to watch the previously recommended video, or choose to experiment on your own, if you do feel you have extra time, I’d recommend skipping around through this video put out by Roblox themselves here. This is a significantly older form of studio, but all that is shown within it are basic premises, and each can still be done in similar fashion with newer versions of studio. There are more in depth playlists of Roblox produced building tutorials as well, such as with the “Roblox University” playlist, but these videos are more for professional game development, and not the simple skills I feel we need in making educational games.
With that, follow the instructions in the video, or experiment with the program, and begin on creating your first game. Open up to an empty baseplate, and feel free to proceed to the next step.
Step 3
Baseplate, Models, and Studio Setup
After you have your baseplate, there are a few levels of tools and helpful prefabricated items that you can use to better understand how to efficiently create educational Roblox games.
The bulk of these would be located within a model created specifically for this tutorial, being that of a basic guide and template for various kinds of Roblox style education games. You can click to add it to your accounts toolbox or models section here. I conceptualized a few formats of how Roblox can be used for education with only minimal building and scripting experience, and each is detailed within the model with pros and cons of using that specific style of educational game.
There are also “free models”, items that exist with a quick search in the Roblox toolbox. that can help you quickly get ahead with your educational game and further stoke creativity. These can be found by searching the toolbox window in the Roblox Studio, or on the marketplace tab of the Roblox create section of the site.
The last part of the studio setup is to set up the 3 tabs you need for using studio effectively. These tabs being the toolbox tab, explorer tab, and properties tab. You can learn how to quickly set these up here.
Step 4
Core Resources for Building Educational Games
Knowing how to build the game is one step, but I wanted to list what I believe to be the core aspects of building with this platform in regards to making quick educational review games. These are tools or mechanics of gameplay with linked tutorials that with the addition of basic building skills, and a bit of creativity, will help you create an entertaining and engaging educational game.
Can Collide: A feature hidden within the properties menu of specific parts. This feature determines if a part collides with a player and acts as a platform / wall or if the part can be walked / fallen through. This is important in the path style of review games, and a tutorial to quickly learn this feature can be found here.
Spawn Points: This is where the players spawn in, so when your students join the game, this spawn point block determines where within the review game that they start. Usually your baseplate will come with a spawn point, but in the instance it doesn’t, you can always make one using the video tutorial here.
Anchoring: This is a feature that makes sure your blocks stay put, and don’t fall down when the game starts. It’s what separates a floating platform from a movable ball or rock. You can find this feature in the same space as the can collide feature, but you can view a video on how to do this here.
Duplicate Tool: This feature is almost critical to making these review games quickly. With a simple click and drag, a right click, and selecting the words “duplicate”, you can copy an number of parts and have them repeat again. For educational games, this is incredibly useful for copying old review games, and using them as templates for new ones. Normally I would link a video, but all that has to be done is to click or click and drag, then right click, “duplicate”.
Adding Text to Parts: An equally critical feature to the duplicate tool, this feature is core to actually spelling out the questions and answers you may want to use with each question you create. While the model with templates has some questions with signs already on them, you can learn to create this tool, and edit this text here.
Smooth Block Moving: This feature is much less critical, but can be a frustrating one to deal with in regards to how it limits the movement, scale, and stretchiness of blocks in the studio. If you feel the need to move blocks to an exact location or stretch them to specific measurements, you can learn this feature here.
Step 5
Advanced / Additional Features
While the previously mentioned features may be enough for most educators, there are some more advanced but still rather simple features you can use to help diversify what kind of game you plan to make.
Script Editing: Scripts or codes are the secret magic that make everything programmable on roblox work. Not everything is going to use a script however, nor is everyone expected to be able to script to make a basic game. I myself cannot script in full, but I do know a bit about Script editing
In the most basic sense, you need to open the model, go into the mini menus within the part, and find where its script is.
Then, after you double click the script, you should look for the area relevant to the script you want to change. For this example, that would be the word “yes” as the code to open the door. From there, you can change the doors appearance, and the code, to whatever you may enjoy.
Free Models: Free models are relatively easy to use or place prefabricated structures or objects that are made by players on the site to be used by others in their creations. Things like trees, clouds, cars, etc. All of this can be found here. This is a very easy tool to learn, only requiring a quick search, click, and drag from the toolbox into the game. This feature is not always the most safe however, as some users may embed scripts into objects that make the game slower, so this tool must be used with caution.
Step 6
You did it! / Publish and play
That’s basically all there is to it! once the game is done, you can click file, save to Roblox as, and publish your place! This place can then be accessed from any account with a link to it, and can easily be opened in class.
I hope that this article has helped you improve the overall quality and experience of your classroom or one on one sessions with a student. Turning things like this into educational measures can do a great deal of good for those who already enjoy it. For another example, you can check out one of my past places used for a class in a catholic school here. Best of luck, and happy building!
