Active Learning Multiplayer Scenario Game-Based Learning: Escape Rooms

Escape rooms represent the lion's share of these types of games that are currently being deployed in education, corporate training, and libraries.  An escape room is part theater, part team building exercise, and all about solving puzzles and interpreting clues within the context of a theme or subject area.   “The most literal definition of an escape room is a game which requires players to escape from imprisonment by exploiting their surroundings.”1   Educational escape rooms or games have applied this concept to engage students within a particular subject matter. The educational escape room concept is basically an organized form of problem based learning that uses aspects of the curriculum within the context of an engaging scenario or theme . The format of most educational escape rooms takes the form of students trying to get into a series of locked boxes rather than necessarily trying to escape a room. Students follow the clues to find and solve the puzzles to discover the lock combinations to get more clues or puzzles.  Students eventually solve the final big puzzle.” In the process students are inspired to learn the lesson content in order to “win.” “Educational escape rooms can be super effective in schools because of their ability to be adapted to any subject. Students will be excited and motivated to learn different subjects in an immersive, engaging environment.”2

1. Aaron Hallaway.  “What is a ‘Room Escape’?”  Geek & Sundry, May 29, 2015, https://geekandsundry.com/what-is-a-room-escape/.  

2. Joseph Mara Aaron. “Why Educational Escape Rooms will benefit  students in the long run.” In, July 31, 2017,
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-educational-escape-rooms-benefit-students-long-run-mara/.