With Rachelle Rawlinson

Escape rooms can be immersive environments where players or teams of players work together to find clues, solve puzzles to achieve a goal (usually escaping) before time runs out. Escape rooms can be traced back to Japan in the early 2000s, Lama and Martín (2021) reflect on the spectacular growth of the escape room sector over the past decade, recognizing the popularity of escape rooms culturally for recreation and as a profitable part of the leisure market. Worldwide, escape rooms popularity and growth has shone a light on their educational potential as tools for supporting learning. Over the past decade the increased popularity of escape room and puzzle-based activities has seen them used in many educational contexts for activities, assessments as well as student centered learning opportunities. Many influences have come together to create what we understand as and describe as escape rooms, and these come from many different contexts.

In understanding the pedagogic basis for escape rooms, it’s important to recognise their interdisciplinary nature and origins as a form of commercial entertainment (Rawlinson and Whitton 2024) and more recent alignment to pedagogy and positioning as learner-centred active learning opportunities (Adams et al., 2018). Escape rooms have been praised for providing a context for learning through failure (Rawlinson and Whitton, 2024) as well as supporting soft skill development such as communication and teamworking skills (Veldkamp et al., 2020) as well as problem solving and lateral thinking.

Digital escape rooms adapt aspects of physical escape rooms and augment these practices using digital tools in online environments. The shift to online interaction in 2020 saw different low-cost implementations and explorations of such tools used in an educational context, which has disrupted and demonstrated the potential of digital escape rooms as educational opportunities. Using readily accessible tools such as OneNote, Google Forms, Twine and the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) used by a university, as proven popular because of their low-cost adaptability and potential to engage and include players across demographics. Such open access has meant that educators and students alike can experiment with, design and learn with escape rooms.

Where do we start?

Different aspects of popular culture demonstrate aspects of escape rooms that we may encounter everyday without realising. Some examples are listed below, there are plenty more though, what can you think of that could be considered a puzzle or escape room? Tell me in the run up to the chat use using the hashtag #LTHEchat

• TV – there are shows such as Crystal Maze, Knightmare and Fort Boyard to name a few.
• Books – Masquerade by Kit Williams, choose your own adventure books as well as puzzle books such as crosswords, wordsearches and magic eye books.
• Popular culture – we can also look towards the world of magic (such as sleight of hand and conjuring) and illusions, and make use of elements such as surprise.
• Games – such as cluedo, physical escape rooms, escape room card games, Minecraft (yes, you can make escape rooms in here!), Mouse Trap, The Room, and many more.
• Or ‘easter eggs’ – a hidden message, image or feature in a video game, commonly associated with electronic mediums but in reality can be found everywhere. Think of secret menus – do you know how to order a Kinder Bueno latte in Starbucks? Or animal style fries in in ‘n’ out burger?

It’s safe to say we can find inspiration for playful activities such as escape rooms anywhere. The challenge tends to be knowing how to adapt such inspirations to a learning, teaching and assessment context and to understand and evaluate how effective this might be for your role, or if indeed it’s something you want to engage with at all. It’s important to remember that these kinds of activities aren’t for everybody.

Create your own escape room blueprint

This #LTHEchat will work a little differently and additionally to the questions on X you will be provided with prompts to help you think through and develop a blueprint for your own digital escape room. You can engage with these prompts on a Padlet board we will share during the chat. This has been set up with a view to you referring back to it later. It is entirely up to you if you decide to engage with this activity.

Below you will find below three options of engagement which outline how you can participate with this chat. Feel free to mix and match and do whatever suits you. The Padlet will remain live, so this is something you could come back to at a later date.

How to engage with this LTHEchat

We’re experimenting a little during this #LTHEchat and it will be a multillayered experience and it’s up to you how you choose to engage. You have three options here.

1. You can answer just the questions as you normally would on X. Start your answer with A1, A2, A3 etc.
2. We will be sharing a Padlet board with you containing prompts to build your own escape room blueprint. These will be shared 5 minutes after each question and you will be directed to respond to these on Padlet. I’d encourage you to engage with others and feedback on their ideas. This is a resource you can come back to.
3. You can answer both the questions as you normally would AND the Padlet prompts.

If you choose to take on the challenge, you can use the prompts to help you gather the components you need to think through and create your own digital escape room or puzzle based activity blueprint. Whether that be for use in the classroom, as part of an assessment, as a challenge for your children (I use escape rooms for my nieces and nephew to earn their Christmas and birthday gifts!) is entirely up to you.

If you want to reach out for support after the chat, please do so.

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About Rachelle

Rachelle Emily Rawlinson (was O’Brien) has worked in the education sector for more than 10 years as a volunteer, independent consultant, in higher education and the commercial sector. Rachelle is passionate about transforming education through developing playful and inclusive learning opportunities which prioritise access for all. In her role as a Senior Learning Designer at Durham Centre for Academic Development at Durham University, Rachelle champions the integration of digital pedagogy, inclusivity and playfulness into curricula. Rachelle became a National Teaching Fellow in 2023 in recognition for her work in playfulness and inclusivity. She won a CATE award with the #creativeHE team. She is a Senior Fellow of the HEA (SFHEA), a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technologists (CMALT) and a Microsoft Innovative Education Expert (MIEE).

Her research interests include digital education, digital games and escape rooms, surprise and playfulness in Higher Education. Rachelle is a PhD student at Northumbria University in Newcastle where she is researching the educational potential of digital escape rooms in Higher Education.

Want to know more? Places I’ve talked about Escape Rooms:

Find Rachelle on X

Email Rachelle

Check out Rachelle’s blog

References:

• Adams, V., Burger, S., Crawford, K. and Setter, R., 2018. Can You Escape? Creating an Escape Room to Facilitate Active Learning. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development, 34(2), pp.E1 – E5. DOI: 10.1097/NND.0000000000000433

• Lama, A., and Martín, M. 2021. Decoding escape rooms from a tourism perspective: A global scale analysis. Moravian Geographical Reports, 29(1): 2–14. Doi: https://doi.org/10.2478/mgr-2021-0001 

• Rawlinson, R,E and Whitton, N. (2024) Escape Rooms as Tools for Learning Through Failure. Electronic Journal of e-Learning 22 (4), 19-29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.21.7.3182

• Veldkamp, A., Daemen, J., Teekens, S., Koelewijn, S., Knippels, M.P.J. and Joolingen, W.R., 2020a. Escape boxes: Bringing escape room experience into the classroom. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(4), pp.1220–1239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12935

Associated Literature

• O’Brien, R., & Farrow, S (2020). ‘Escaping the inactive classroom: Escape Rooms for teaching technology’. Journal for Social Media in Higher Education. https://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/index.php/JSML/article/view/395

• O’Brien, R, E. (2020). The Great Escape – Escape Rooms for Learning and Teaching. Durham University.

• Building your own Escape Room is a OneNote file which contains step by step instructions to guide you through setting up your very own Escape Room https://durhamuniversity-my.sharepoint.com/:o:/g/personal/kfqn12_durham_ac_uk/EjEj5SEGVS9LpxRKXzdi_DEBllEgGImvEdCWBxYk2S4rJg?e=4nHaan

• O’Brien, R, E. (2020) Unwrapping the “fun in games” with Rachelle O’Brien. The Education Burrito. (Guest).

• Stachowiak, B., Whitton, N., and O’Brien, R (2022). Teaching in Higher Ed Episode 402 Playful Learning and Virtual Escape Rooms. (Guest).

• O’Brien, R, E., Johnson, J., Varga-Atkins, T., and Sampson, A (2023). Treasure Island Pedagogies – Episode 23 The one with the magic box. (Guest).

Resources from the escape rooms in education: showcase & celebration:

• Escape rooms in education: showcase & celebration 2023 Padlet

• Escape rooms in education: showcase & celebration 2023 Wakelet

• Escape rooms in education: showcase & celebration 2024 Padlet