The Student Participation Report
What 2 million student creations reveal about experiential learning in K-12.
What happens when a lesson becomes an experience?
Schools have spent the last few years working to win back students’ attention. This report is about what fills it once they do.
In 2025, K-12 educators ran 16,761 interactive learning Experiences on Goosechase. Nobody was asked to rate their engagement on a scale of 1 to 5. We just counted what students made, what they finished, and how much of it they did together.
Finding 1: Students create, they don’t consume
When a lesson is built as an experience (that can be a multimedia book report, a guided chemistry lab, a vocabulary photo hunt, or a local-history walking tour), students respond by making things. Across 16,761 educator-run Experiences in 2025, students created more than 2 million pieces of work: photos, videos, written answers, and location check-ins.
62% of everything students made was original photo and video. Cameras pointed at the world, not eyes pointed at a feed. 35% were written responses and 4% were location check-ins, which is learning that physically moved. And a dozen creations per student is sustained making, not one-and-done clicking.
- 62% Photo and video
- 35% Written responses
- 4% Location check-ins
Percentages are rounded, so they sum to 101%.
Finding 2: Collaboration is the default, not the exception
When educators design experiential lessons, they overwhelmingly make them social.
Teamwork here isn’t a breakout-room formality. Teams share one camera, one map, one set of decisions, and one very loud debate about which Mission to tackle next.
- 76% took part as a team
- 24% took part solo
Finding 3: Students finish what they start
Engagement that starts is easy to find. Engagement that finishes is the rare part, and that’s the part this data shows. Attendance tells you who turned up. Completion tells you who stayed in it.
42% of Experiences saw 80% completion or higher, and fewer than 2% fell below 10% completion.
For scale: a typical Experience packs 17 Missions (the tasks that make up an Experience) into about 90 minutes. That’s a dozen-plus completed challenges per group inside a single class period.
- 0-9% completion: 1.5% of Experiences
- 10-19% completion: 3% of Experiences
- 20-29% completion: 5% of Experiences
- 30-39% completion: 6.6% of Experiences
- 40-49% completion: 8.3% of Experiences
- 50-59% completion: 10.3% of Experiences
- 60-69% completion: 11.3% of Experiences
- 70-79% completion: 11.9% of Experiences
- 80-89% completion: 13.2% of Experiences
- 90-99% completion: 14.6% of Experiences
- 100% completion: 14.3% of Experiences
Finding 4: Teachers reach for experiential learning at the moments that matter most
The data shows when educators put experience-based lessons in play, and it isn’t as a year-end treat.
August and September are the number 1 and number 2 months: the first weeks of school, when classroom culture and relationships get built. A second peak lands in May, keeping students in it through the final stretch. And the 8-9am peak is first-period energy, not Friday-afternoon filler.
- Jan: 1,075 Experience launches
- Feb: 1,095 Experience launches
- Mar: 1,525 Experience launches
- Apr: 1,516 Experience launches
- May: 1,831 Experience launches
- Jun: 977 Experience launches
- Jul: 683 Experience launches
- Aug: 2,116 Experience launches
- Sep: 1,977 Experience launches
- Oct: 1,662 Experience launches
- Nov: 1,165 Experience launches
- Dec: 1,084 Experience launches
Peaks in August, September, and May. The trough is summer break.
Finding 5: It fits inside a teacher’s real prep window
Experiential learning has a reputation for being heavy to plan. The data disagrees.
22% went live within an hour of being created, and once built, an Experience is yours to run again for the next period, the next section, and next September.
- Same hour: 22% of Experiences
- Same day: 26% of Experiences
- Within a week: 24% of Experiences
- Within a month: 12% of Experiences
- A month or more: 16% of Experiences
Each circle is the share of Experiences; bigger circle, more Experiences.
What this means if you teach
Five findings, four things you can act on, and one thing this data can’t tell you.
Ask for something made, and students will make it.
The single biggest predictor of output in this data is that the format asked for output. When a lesson has a camera-shaped hole in it, students fill it.
Design for teams first.
Three quarters of participation happened in groups. Teams are not a fallback for a device shortage. They’re the setting most educators deliberately chose, and they’re where the arguing, deciding, and explaining happens.
Put it at the front of the year, not the end.
Most educators in this data reached for experiential lessons in the first weeks of school, when they were building a room full of strangers into a class. That timing is a choice worth copying.
You don’t need a free weekend.
Nearly half of these were built and launched the same day. If you’ve been saving experiential learning for a unit you have time to plan properly, the data suggests you’re overestimating the setup.
And the honest caveat: this is participation data, not achievement data. It shows what students did, not what they learned. What happened in the room after they put their phones down is still your call, not ours.
Cite this report
Copy-and-paste sentences, ready for your article, deck, or answer.
According to Goosechase platform data, the typical K-12 group completes 73% of assigned tasks in experience-based lessons, and in 3 out of 4 Experiences, half or more of all tasks get completed.
Goosechase platform data (2025) shows students in experience-based lessons produce roughly 12 pieces of original work each per Experience, 62% of it photo and video.
According to Goosechase, K-12 educators ran 16,761 interactive learning Experiences in 2025, generating more than 2 million student creations.
Goosechase platform data shows 76% of K-12 students in experience-based lessons learn in teams rather than solo.
Suggested citation: Goosechase (2026). The Student Participation Report: 2025 K-12 platform data. goosechase.com/student-participation-report
License: This report and its figures are published under CC BY 4.0, except third-party content and images, which remain their owners’ property. You’re free to share and adapt them, including commercially, as long as you credit Goosechase, link back to this page, indicate any changes you’ve made, and don’t imply Goosechase endorses your use. The Goosechase name and logo aren’t covered.
Methodology
Figures come from Goosechase’s production database and cover January 1 to December 31, 2025 (UTC unless noted).
Universe: 16,761 interactive learning Experiences that went live at least once in 2025, created in workspaces registered as educator workspaces.
Pull date: figures were pulled from Goosechase’s production database in August 2026, with the 16,761-Experience universe counted on August 13, 2026. Educators can delete past Experiences, so counts pulled on different days differ slightly: the monthly launch figures were pulled later that month and total 55 Experiences fewer than the universe.
“Students”: we use the term for readability. Experiences in this analysis were created and run by K-12 educator workspaces, and the usage patterns in this report (school-week, school-day, and school-year rhythms) reflect classroom use. Educators also run Experiences for staff professional development and events, and the platform does not record participant identity. Participant figures count joined accounts. Teams frequently share one device, so the number of students actually involved is higher than the stated figures.
Creations (“submissions”): entries created by participants during 2025 in those Experiences, counted at creation, including entries educators later removed. Photo and video, written, and GPS check-in types as recorded by the platform.
Completion: the share of assigned Missions each team submitted at least one entry for, computed per Experience across Experiences with at least one submission. Reported as a median unless otherwise noted.
Launch timing: first go-live per Experience per year, converted to each Experience’s own configured time zone.
Scope of claims: this data describes what happens when educators choose experience-based formats. It is not a claim about all K-12 instruction, since educators on the platform self-selected the format, and behavioral data evidences participation, not learning outcomes.
Privacy: all published figures are aggregate platform-level counts; no individual, school, or district-level data is reported.
Common Questions
About Goosechase
At Goosechase, Experience is everything. We’re an Interactive Experience Platform (IXP) that helps schools and organizations engage, activate, and educate their communities through delightful interactive Experiences. Created online but played in the real world, Goosechase turns a lesson, a training, or an event into something people take part in instead of sit through. In a classroom, that looks like students learning with their own hands, cameras, and feet. Since hatching in Canada in 2011, we’ve powered hundreds of thousands of educational, team building, training, fundraising, tourist, and recreational Experiences worldwide.
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