LibGuides: Escape Rooms: Why use escape rooms in education?

It's easy to find articles touting the benefits of escape room games in higher education. A few obvious benefits are:

the introduction of an element of fun to the learning experience.
easy integration of digital games into Canvas for asynchronous play
team-building experience with physical games

Below are books and articles from scholarly publications that discuss the use of educational escape room games in a variety of disciplines.

Books featuring escape rooms in higher education

Escape Rooms and Other Immersive Experiences in the Library by Ellyssa Kroski "In over a decade of designing programs, nothing I've ever worked on inspired more delight and surprise than our immersive programs," says librarian Nicole Scherer. Escape Rooms worldwide have quadrupled in the past three years, and libraries are getting in the act. Scavenger hunts have been a library orientation staple, puzzles, clues, and team competitions add to the fun. When it comes to STEM or curriculum support, what better way to learn chemistry than the immersive play of a wizardry potion class. Author Ellyssa Kroski, an escape room enthusiast and potions class graduate, will show you a full range of options with how-to guidance, on such topics as: Hosting a pre-designed game from leading educational supplier, BreakoutEDU.com Start-to-finish, replicable model Kroski developed for her library--Search for Alexander Hamilton and the Missing Librarian.How to design your own escape room from scratchDescriptive listing of 16 library projects with audience demographics, run-time, required staff, and budgetResources for making crossword, soduku, or jigsaw puzzles.Escape room board games or a digital breakout with Google toolsPop-up escape rooms to take on the road for outreach.Bring LARP to your library, live-action role-playing, the most popular immersive experiencehow to create an escape room flow-chart for planningDesigning a kid-friendly escape room.Vendor listings of the all the supplies you'll need. Planning template for an escape room project.
Call Number: Z716.33 .K764 2019
ISBN: 9780838917893
Publication Date: 2018-10-15
Motivating Students on a Time Budget by Sarah K. Steiner; Miriam Rigby As librarians, we often find ourselves outside the traditional structure of our education system. Time limits add another layer of complexity; how can we motivate students to learn when we only see them for an hour or two? Motivating Students on a Time Budget begins with a section of research-based, broad-level considerations of student motivation as it relates to short-term information literacy instruction, both in person and online. It then moves into activities and lesson plans that highlight specific motivational strategies and pedagogies: Each encourages the spirit of play, autonomy, and active learning in a grade-free environment. Activities and plans cover everything from game-based learning to escape rooms to role playing to poetry, and are thoroughly explained to be easily incorporated at your campus.
Call Number: ZA3075 .M68 2019
ISBN: 9780838989494
Publication Date: 2019-02-01

Articles featuring escape room games in education

Escaping Traditional Teaching Methods: How to Use Escape Rooms in Undergraduate Nursing Education The purpose of the pilot study was to assess the undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of how teamwork and collaboration, communication and critical thinking emerged and were utilized in the escape room environment, in comparison to the more traditional laboratory experience. The pilot study utilized a descriptive design. IRB approval was obtained, consent forms were signed and an explanation of the study was given to all the participants. A convenience sample was utilized. There were a total of 51 participants. The participants were enrolled in a nontraditional associate degree nursing (ADN) program. A post experience questionnaire was the source of data collection for the study. The questionnaire was developed by the study team and was evaluated for content validity by an expert nurse educator. The questionnaire measured student response to four yes or no questions: 1) Did the escape room cause you to engage in more communication verses the traditional laboratory experience? 2) Did the escape room cause you to think more critically about safety verses the traditional laboratory experience? 3) Did the escape room cause you to engage in more team work and collaboration verses the traditional laboratory experience? and 4) Did the escape room cause you to think more critically about patient centered care verses the traditional laboratory experience? The responses were analyzed utilizing basic descriptive statistics. The results found that nursing student perceptions of improved communication, critical thinking, and teamwork and collaboration occurred by utilizing the escape room modality verses a traditional laboratory activity. Faculty members strive to engage nursing students in active learning. As this pilot study found, technology may not always be the answer to engaging the 21st century student. Escape room activities not only developed student assessment skills, but also encouraged communication and critical thinking, as well as, teamwork and collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Open Access Escape Room: the key to OA engagement? Open access (OA) has had, and will continue to have, a significant effect on the scholarly publishing landscape in academia, yet many academic staff publish OA in order to comply with policies, rather than engaging with the value of open scholarship and in debates that ultimately affect them. Training sessions and workshops are often arranged to increase knowledge and awareness in the academic community, but engagement is often low. On the other hand, some academic staff, who already do engage, will happily attend sessions and workshops to increase their knowledge even further. The struggle to increase OA engagement overall could be due to the training not being appealing enough, and academics not being aware of benefits until after they have attended workshops. At the University of Essex, we took a bold, brave and curious approach to increasing engagement during Open Access Week 2018, and created an OA-themed escape room. This resulted in great engagement from students, academic staff and professional services staff, some of whom reported that they never knew how relevant OA was for them. The Open Access Escape Room was a success, and provided a positive environment for conversations around OA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Escape Rooms Build Better Researchers With the shift to learner-centered education, academic libraries have opportunities to design programming that reflects the contextual active learning occurring in the classroom. The University of Wisconsin - Parkside Library designed a flexible research game for patrons of different backgrounds and abilities using the Breakout EDU box. This game introduces different age groups to the library and the skills needed to be a successful researcher in a fun hands-on way. Utilizing constructivist learning techniques, such as modeling, coaching, scaffolding, exploration and articulation, the game requires participants to practice creativity and collaboration, two very important research skills. Overall, the experiences of both library moderators and participants in this game have important implications for classroom research instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Escape the welcome cliché: Designing educational escape rooms to enhance students' learning experience The University of Surrey Library and Learning Support Services (LLSS) recognised an increasing need to transform its welcome, induction and orientation activities for students. Past activities have entailed delivering information to students in ways which may have led to information overload and lack of engagement by students with library services. The LLSS have been exploring innovative ways to welcome students to university, moving away from didactic approaches. This paper presents one such innovation produced among a series of activities during 2017/18, an educational escape room, informed by the work of Walsh (2017). This activity invited students to solve a series of themed puzzles in the escape room, introducing them to library services and information literacy (IL) skills to support their studies. This report provides an account of the challenges and positive outcomes encountered in designing the escape room, with a view to sharing good learning and teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Escape the Evil Professor! Escape Room Review Activity In this article, the author describes an exam review activity in which students answered questions and solved puzzles in order to escape the review session. In a general psychology (100-level) course and research methods in psychology (300-level) course, students solved a series of puzzles and review questions. This format is similar to popular escape room attractions. Finally, the first group to sing a song that would appease the evil professor was allowed to leave the review session. Perceptions of the escape room were positive and concepts questioned in the review game were retained better than concepts that were not included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]