Field notes from a learning studio.
Articles, research spotlights, galleries, case studies, and downloads on learning design, game-based pedagogy, and what we’re figuring out along the way.
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- Concrete: Grounded in something real.
- Active: You figure it out yourself.
- Joyful: Intrinsically enjoyable.
Founder Insights
Hand-written by Lindsey Tropf · Founder & CEO
How we think about learning.
Joyful
Making Education Less Adversarial
Kids decide they’re bad at school by second grade. The fix isn’t a better quiz — it’s a feedback system that doesn’t feel like a verdict.
Read the essay →
Concrete
Why Games? (The Real Answer)
Most people come to game-based learning thinking "kids love games, let’s use that." I came from the opposite direction. Here’s what a decade of World of Warcraft raids taught me about pedagogy — and the three principles it produced.
Read the piece →
Active
The General Public Still Doesn’t Understand the Purpose of Education
Being able to answer homework questions quickly doesn’t produce the type of citizens we need in the world. We’re updating the theories behind how we teach, and need to help the public understand these shifts.
Read the piece →
From Lindsey's desk
The full update feed.
Women in STEM — 24 Scientists, 24 Art Styles
GalleryOpen ↗
Field notes · Codesign LARP
Why we LARP storylines before we build them
We’re codesigning a statistics quest with middle schoolers at Buffalo Public Schools.
Apr 28, 2026Read note →
Field notes · ASU+GSV Summit
The hard part isn’t the AI. It’s the pedagogy layer.
Four days of back-to-back conversations, and one thread kept surfacing: the hard part of edtech right now isn’t the AI or the content.
Apr 18, 2026Read note →
Active
3% of collaborative talk was off-task. The rest was the work.
NSF funded
Quick look
Key art · the Himalayan biome
Active
100% navigation success for blind & visually impaired students
NIDILRR · SBIR Phase I
Quick look
Why is the park trash overflowing? A 4th-grade urbanization quest
[Active
Article
Why Games Are Structurally Perfect for Inquiry-Based Learning
A world to investigate, phenomena firsthand, decisions with consequences, low-stakes failure. Games already deliver what inquiry needs.
Tyto Learning Design Team
May 21, 2026 · 7 min readRead article ↗**
Joyful
Closing the STEM Gap — Without Pink-Washing
Targeted programs reach a fraction of the girls who need them. Transforming how STEM is encountered during school reaches everyone.
[Tyto Learning Design Team
Apr 28, 2026 · 8 min readRead article ↗**
Culturally Responsive Science Teaching — and How Games Can Help
Pedagogy alone can’t answer the deeper question: better for whom? Where game-based learning slots in.
[Tyto Learning Design Team
Apr 9, 2026 · 9 min readRead article ↗**
Quick look
The question “why are we learning this?” answers itself when the learning lives inside a real situation.
— From the Tyto framework
60% of students had increases in STEM engagement
Overdeck & Cambiar Foundations
Quick look
The Tyto Codesign Process — Partnership Guide
How we work with curriculum publishers and workforce programs from kickoff to launch.
PDF · 6 pages · Download ↓
0.95
class-level correlation between game progress and learning growth
IES · Dept of Education
Quick look
Research
Making Game-Based Learning Accessible
What we learned building for blind & visually impaired students. Why they want to explore, not just complete tasks.
[Tyto Learning Design Team
May 14, 2026 · 9 min readRead article ↗**
More like real science — more student-led, less structured, and more conducive to collaboration.
— TERC, independent evaluation, 2024
It puts a spin on regular learning and I’ve never seen anything like it.
— Middle school student
Watch · Tyto Online
Authoring Studio — platform walkthrough
12% gain in science & engineering practices — after one day
NSF · confirmed by TERC, 2024
Quick look
Key art · the tundra biome
20% increase in math performance
IES · WestEd research partner
Quick look