Sheldon says that Leonard loved his car games and was not joking. Many times Leonard stated outright that he hated them and in fact almost got into a car accident in The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification (2010) because he didn't want to play Sheldon's game. This a testament to Sheldon lacking the ability to read people. This was made clear in the " University Twin Test".
Sheldon's car game where two people alternate naming chemical elements alphabetically guarantees that the second player will lose, because the second player will have to name an element starting with the letter "J" and there are none. Sheldon probably knows this because he insists on going first.
The "new model for learning" is a spoof on the then-current need for distance learning like zoom and Google classroom.