Our vision at Roblox is to reimagine the way people come together, offering a safe and civil place where everyone can create, explore, collaborate, and share experiences. After over six years with Imbellus developing simulation-based assessments that evaluate the cognitive and practical skills life requires, I am thrilled for the opportunity to leverage my learnings as we begin our next chapter of Roblox Education.
Roblox Education will support and amplify the teaching and learning already happening with Roblox Studio and on Roblox. Every day, students learn to code, problem solve with friends, and experience faraway places, not just hear about them. We want everyone to have access to those opportunities. Our goal is to support 100 million students learning on our platform by 2030.
Engaging 100 million students requires equipping educators everywhere with dynamic learning environments that bring to life educational content—science phenomena, historical moments, or math concepts that undergird real-world systems—content begging to be experienced, not just studied. On Roblox, educators, administrators, curricular and instructional providers, families, and students will be able to access an ecosystem of educational experiences that are both fun and engaging.
Equally as important is teaching with Roblox Studio. Roblox Studio offers community members, ranging from educators to curious students, the chance to learn to create, code, and iterate with a free, easy-to-use authoring engine. Since 2015, Roblox has supported educational initiatives that leverage Roblox Studio for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) instruction. Our Build It, Play It events have mobilized 20+ million students to learn new development skills in Roblox Studio. Meanwhile, dozens of STEM instructional organizations, including ID Tech and Code Ninjas, have led tens of thousands of students through computer science, design, and development courses.
The next big step for Roblox Education is furthering the educational utility of both Roblox Studio and Roblox client-side experiences, all in service of supporting teaching and learning in the metaverse.
Our Initial Roblox Community Fund Grantees
As our founder and CEO David Baszucki announced in a blog post earlier today, we are launching our newest initiative, the Roblox Community Fund, with an initial $10 million fund dedicated at first to bringing high-quality educational experiences to Roblox and to support educators in using Roblox Studio in their classrooms.
The Roblox Community Fund will make investments, grants, and advances for education partners who develop curriculum and educational experiences that leverage our platform in immersive and compelling ways, as well as support services to foster teaching and learning on Roblox. As Roblox expands our education work and improves our technology and platform capabilities involved in serving students and schools worldwide, we will focus on ensuring our partners and programs reach underserved communities.
We welcome education creators to imagine concepts and contexts for learning that Roblox can serve best. Our initial education grantees represent the caliber and heterogeneity of creators we hope to fund:
- FIRST® and Filament Games have joined forces to collaborate on an exciting new virtual robotics game based on RoboCo, that will meet the needs of today's robotics competitors while broadening access to this vital and future-facing form of STEM project-based learning. Through open-ended sandbox play, problem-based challenges, and competitive virtual tournaments inspired by contemporary eSports championships, this new experience will aim to provide a virtual adventure that complements the hands-on, engaging robotics programs offered by FIRST.
- The Museum of Science will launch a Destination Mars journey where students will explore the International Space Station and plan for a Mars landing. Students will work in teams to develop and maintain infrastructure to support experiments and human life on Mars. In the process, students will understand how NASA is staging its increasing human presence in space. Students will experience the living conditions in different extraterrestrial environments and the adaptations needed to ensure human survival outside of Earth, all while practicing STEM habits of mind, particularly those connected to engineering design process and scientific inquiry. Students will employ Next Generation Science Standard Practices and Skills as they learn and explore as scientists in space.
- Project Lead The Way (PLTW) will release unique STEM educational learning experiences beginning in the spring of 2022. Over 250,000 students across the nation will be able to explore careers and concepts in computer science, engineering, and biomedical science. Students will engage, collaborate, explore, imagine, create, and solve problems in a virtual environment to acquire key understandings to STEM concepts and develop the transportable skills needed to tackle today’s challenges and to be prepared for tomorrow’s careers.
Roblox strives to be a cherished learning tool and destination, both in the classroom and at home. We do not purport to disrupt, replace, or reinvent how education happens; rather, our aspiration is to enable an ecosystem of content that will support educators and families as they continue to foster student learning worldwide. While we understand our educational offerings cannot be everything for everyone, we will do our best to be useful, low-friction, open, and relevant to community members who choose to learn with Roblox.
You can learn more about our vision for supporting teaching and learning with Roblox on our education site. We also encourage educational providers, developers, and educators to read about the Roblox Community Fund and to contact our team at education@roblox.com with proposals for building educational experiences on Roblox or teaching with Roblox Studio.
