Escape rooms afford students the opportunity to apply prior learning, collaborate, and hone critical thinking and leadership skills. After experiencing an escape room firsthand, participants will explore the art of storytelling and investigate how the scenario drives construction of online synchronous and asynchronous escape rooms.
With social media distractions, work, and family obligations all tugging at students’ attention, many educators have turned to gamification to assist in keeping learners on track and on task. Of course, games such as escape rooms afford opportunities to fail in a safe environment and to try again, improving each time. Correspondingly, research indicates that when escape rooms blend gamification with the methodological approach of case-based or problem-based learning, it increases student engagement with course content. Studies also reveal that the games that most impact students’ knowledge gains and retention contain challenges designed to draw learners beyond their comfort zone. Escape rooms contribute to student agency and autonomy in their knowledge acquisition, enhance critical thinking and leadership skills, showcase learners’ understanding of concepts, support collaboration, and motivate students to apply learning in order to overcome obstacles presented in simulated real-world scenarios. Furthermore, the ticking clock aspect urges students to think on their feet.
Nevertheless, how do you draw students into the environment of the game, especially escape rooms? How do you foster buy-in and keep it going throughout the game? One way is to capture students’ attention with an enthralling scenario and let their curiosity and creativity sustain them as they struggle to solve the problems and earn their escape.
On the one hand, good storytelling in a gamified educational framework champions learning through guiding inquiry, encountering and rectifying knowledge gaps, and highlighting or expanding on key concepts. On the other hand, storytelling must employ creative techniques or risk students losing interest. Think about what you find irresistible when you read a novel. Is it the nonstop action? Do you crave cliffhangers? Do you seek out intriguing characters? Does the plot drip with mystery? Good storytelling should make use of all of these innovative modus operandi. Moreover, research demonstrates that a well-crafted narrative not only ups student engagement, it boosts students’ success rates in the course. Nonetheless, the real trick is to create a story that reinforces module and course learning objectives while, at the same time, it relates to students’ lives or career aspirations. Sound like a tall order? Maybe not as much as you think. In this gamified session attendees will partake in an example scenario and escape room based on a very timely topic that affects everyone on Earth—climate change. Although focusing on environmental issues straight out of the news, the basic structure of this illustrative tale and escape room can be easily adapted to numerous topics across diverse academic disciplines.
Levels of Participation:
After a short introduction and summary of pertinent research, attendees in this gamified session will be sent into breakout escape rooms where they will experience, firsthand, the teamwork and communication skills necessary to successfully overcome obstacles and solve problems in order to implement, in this case, an entry strategy to gain access to Dr. Olivia Marvel-Newton’s ultra-secure home office. As her helicopter goes down in a freak accident, she sends a cryptic text message to her staff, indicating where to find clues to the door key code. (Don’t worry. Dr. Marvel-Newton isn’t gravely injured. However, she does receive a head wound and must be placed in a medically induced coma.) All teams will be given the link to the clue prompts embedded in an asynchronous TriviaMaker game, complete with a ticking clock and intense music. Teams must work together to figure out the cryptic. Hints will be available upon request. However, they will cost the team precious time. Once the teams successfully crack the door key code and enter Dr. Marvel-Newton’s office, they will have only minutes to complete the mission by discovering, deciphering, and decrypting the cryptogram clues left scattered around the office. The first team to emerge victorious from the breakout escape room with the correct cryptogram code will receive a badge. Those who don’t make it out in time must contend with Dr. Marvel-Newton’s snarky computer program.
In the post-game debrief we will explore the inner workings of a captivating narrative with which to sustain students’ immersion in the escape room story, trace scenario elements back to module and course learning objectives, and investigate how to construct escape rooms using the institution’s LMS and other low- and no-cost educational technology tools. Questions are encouraged throughout the session, as well as in the Q&A at the end.
Session Goals:
Attendees will be able to discuss the essentials for crafting convincing scenarios that align with module and course learning objectives. Participants will also be able to strategize ways to develop a gripping narrative and build escape rooms utilizing the tools available in their institution’s LMS. Additionally, attendees will be able to communicate the benefits of incorporating interactive escape rooms into their courses.
Takeaways:
The takeaways for participants in this session include suggestions for incorporating creative writing techniques in cultivating an attention-grabbing narrative that supports module and course learning objectives, as well as ideas for how to design escape rooms without specialized software.