From an empty class list to a live game.

Signing in

The teacher dashboard is at play.meralearn.com/teacher. MeraLearn is free while it is being built and access is by arrangement: tell us what you teach and we will set you up.

1Write your content

Content is organised in three layers. A subject (Culinary, IT, Business) holds units. A unit holds categories and terms: each term has a name, a definition, and the category it belongs in. That is exactly what students sort.

A subject is only a label. Deleting one unfiles its units; it never deletes them.

Pictures and music

• Unit background fills the screen behind the lobby and the start screen. Landscape, 1920 × 1080 or larger. It is hidden during the round so students can concentrate.
• Category picture fills most of its square answer tile. Square, and something that reads at a glance.
• Term picture is shown under the definition while the term is being sorted.
• Unit music loops for the length of a round, and stops when it ends.
• Your picture and music for each game live in Settings, a tab per game. Used wherever a unit has none of its own.

Pictures can be JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF or AVIF, and video MP4 or WebM, up to 25 MB.

2Add your students

Add students one at a time, or paste a list of names, one per line, into a group. Each student gets a six-character code, and that code is all they ever need to sign in. Nobody gives an email address.

Groups can be renamed and students moved between them. At the end of a course, archive the students rather than deleting them.

3Launch a session

Pick a unit, a group, a length between 1 and 10 minutes, and one of two modes:

• Class-paced. Students join and wait in a lobby, and the round starts for everyone at once when you press Start. One attempt each. It counts towards the class results and the leaderboard.
• Self-paced. Open straight away. Students play whenever they like, as often as they like, until you end it, or until the end of a closing day you pick, which they see on their board. It is practice: it gets its own leaderboard of everyone's best attempt, and never touches the class results.

The mode cannot be changed afterwards, because the rounds already played are filed under it. Launch a new session instead.

4Getting students in

Students open play.meralearn.com and type their code. Their board shows the games open for their group; they tap one to join. They can also type the six-character PIN shown on your session screen; it leaves out letters and numbers that are easy to confuse from across a room.

On a shared tablet the game offers the last student's name rather than assuming it, with a button to use a different code.

5Running the round

The session page shows results as they come in and refreshes every few seconds. Pressing End Game stops everyone at once, and whatever each student has answered so far is saved and scored.

In a class round a student can hand in early, but cannot leave and start again; that would be a way of retaking a test.

6After the round

Every round is marked on the server. For each student you can see their score, accuracy, time and the terms they missed. After a class-paced round the missed terms are flagged for you automatically; add a note, and the student sees both in their history.

The overview page shows the class average and the top students across class-paced rounds.

Worth knowing

• Accuracy counts only the cards a student answered, so running out of time is not marked as getting things wrong. Score still rewards answering more.
• Deleted students, units and sessions wait in the bin for 30 days so a mistake can be undone, then they are removed for good.
• Archived students and sessions are removed for good after 12 months.