Legends of Learning

Legends of Learning is a game-based learning platform for kindergarten through 8th grade, offering more than 2,000 short games in math, science and history, each aligned to state curriculum standards. Teachers assign the games in class, schools and districts buy wider licenses with reporting and integrations, and families can sign children up for Awakening, a game world that runs the same content at home. The About page states the mission as making learning "fun, accessible, and effective" and describes the company as using "ongoing original research to create a marketplace filled with an epic range of curriculum-based games."

The games

The homepage counts "Over 2,000, curriculum-aligned, science, history & math games," and the Learning Universe page describes them as "Handcrafted by the world's top professional game studios and instructional designers." The design rule is that "Each game teaches exactly one standard," so a teacher picks a standard and gets a short set of games for it. The game library shows how that looks in practice: a kindergarten standard on identifying 2-D and 3-D shapes has one game, 3rd grade whole number division has four, 8th grade Pythagorean theorem has three, and middle school electric and magnetic forces has 11. Titles mentioned on the site include Angry Birds and the Multiplication Portal and Robot Chef, a science game about building a robot restaurant. The FAQ adds that there are also career training games.

The FAQ lists the standards the games align with, including Common Core, NGSS, NGSSS, FL BEST, GSE, TEKS, SOL and TASS. The company presents the games as "Not drill and kill" and as usable for practice, test prep and engaging students during direct instruction.

Three products

Learning Universe is the core classroom product. Teachers build assignments that can combine games, videos and assessments, and send them through Google Classroom or another LMS, or as a direct link. Assessments come in three levels of customization: ready-made, custom and randomized. Reports show student progress against state standards, and the FAQ says the data rolls up to the student, class, school and district levels. Paid tiers add math and science lesson plans with hands-on activities, worksheets and discussion guidelines.

Awakening is a multiplayer game world in which students play standard-aligned games on an assigned subject and topic. The FAQ describes it as covering kindergarten through 9th grade, with customizable avatars, battles against other students or computer opponents, quests that earn points, and an arcade room of mini-games to warm up before battles. Players can enter the arcade in Awakening Town or the math and science rooms in the Awakening School, and they are moved through the state curriculum in order. An optional Adventure Pass opens exclusive areas, full leveling and special avatar items, and the site claims pass holders "spend 9X as much time engaged in learning."

Math Basecamp is a math fact fluency add-on, which the pricing page calls "a research-based, five-step approach that builds students' fact mastery based on number sense and fact strategies." It combines fact mastery mini-lessons, application games, real-time reporting and adaptive, individualized instruction.

For families

Parents can create a free account for a child on the parents page, or sign up together through a parent and child account. Through the Parent Portal they get "detailed reports showing their mastery level and also the time they have spent engaged with specific standards or topics." The FAQ recommends playing two to three times a week for at least 25-30 minutes, and suggests helping a child set short goals, such as finishing 10 battles in a week, and longer ones, such as mastering five standards.

Plans and prices

The pricing page publishes four tiers:

• Basic Teacher, free, with sign-up "without a credit card." It includes limited access to the game library, up to 3 concurrent live and queued assignments, gameplay limited by district size, random and custom assessments, and one teacher seat. The FAQ says basic accounts reach all Learning Universe math, science and career training games plus Awakening.
• Premium Classroom, $790 per year per teacher. Unlimited assignments and gameplay, all assessment options, student and class reporting, lesson plans (the page mentions 5E lesson plans) and self-paced professional development.
• School, shown at $4,450 for a school of 400-1000 students, with a selector for schools under 400 and over 1000 students. It gives every teacher in the building all premium features plus Math Basecamp, unlimited teacher seats, school-level reporting, SSO and rostering integrations, and professional development.
• District, priced on request "with volume-based discounts." It adds district-level reporting, LMS integrations with Google Classroom, Canvas and Schoology, SSO and rostering integrations with Google Classroom, Canvas, Classlink, Schoology, GG4L and others, Math Basecamp in all buildings, and synchronous and asynchronous instructor-led professional development, in person and by webinar.

Gameplay is unlimited on the paid tiers; on the free tier, the page says student game play within a district is capped at a level that depends on the district's size. A 15-minute platform demo can be booked from the same page.

Research, awards and privacy

The site leans heavily on research. In a WestEd study it cites, "students who played Legends of Learning games at least twice per week had higher test scores (up to 23 percentile points, equivalent to 0.6 of a standard deviation on their annual state science test) compared to students who did not use the program." A Vanderbilt University study, according to the FAQ, found that students raised test scores by the equivalent of over half a letter grade in three weeks when their teachers used Learning Universe games. A second WestEd study found that 5th and 8th graders with higher usage had higher achievement than peers with low or no usage, in a large district in the southeastern United States.

Awards shown include EduEvidence Efficacy Silver, a Digital Promise product certification, ESSA research certification, an Academic's Choice award, Math Basecamp as a CODiE finalist and the 2022 SIIA CODiE Award for Best Educational Game. On privacy, the FAQ says the company is "fully COPPA and FERPA compliant" and will sign a district's data privacy agreement. The homepage says it is "Trusted by 1000+ districts and 100,000+ teachers"; the pricing page gives 400+ districts and 20,000+ teachers.

Who it suits

Legends of Learning suits K-8 teachers who want short, standard-specific games to slot into a math or science lesson, and who can start free before paying for unlimited assignments and lesson plans. Schools and districts in states whose standards it lists get reporting from student to district level, Math Basecamp for fact fluency and rostering integrations, with published school pricing to plan around. Parents get a free route through Awakening, with mastery reports and an optional paid pass.

It fits less well for teachers who want long, deep projects rather than short games, since each game targets one standard, and for history-heavy classrooms, as the lesson plans and Math Basecamp cover math and science. The free teacher tier is useful for trying it out, but its three-assignment cap and gameplay limit mean regular classroom use points to a paid plan.