The design of Digital Educational Escape Rooms in Higher Education

The design of Digital Educational Escape Rooms in Higher Education 

The design of Digital Educational Escape Rooms in Higher Education 

Manuela Repetto 

Abstract 

"Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs) have proliferated at universities in recent years. These encompass both DEERs set up by the universities themselves for institutional, educational or guidance purposes, as well as those created by faculty members or students themselves for didactic purposes. In the broadest sense of the term, escape rooms can be defined as live action and team-based games in which players face a series of challenges aimed at completing a mission or solving a mystery within a limited time (Nicholson, 2015). As soon as the mission is completed, achieving a combination of hands-on and minds-on activities (Fotaris & Mastoras, 2019), players may leave the room in which they were closed. The engaging nature of escape rooms, coupled with the cognitive skills demanded as players uncover clues and solve puzzles, has inspired many faculty members to adapt the entertainment-based escape room model for an educational use in their disciplinary domain. Recognizing this approach as a fresh method to engage students, they’ve identified it as a novel means to enhance and stimulate the learning processes. Hence, Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs) represent the digital adaptation of traditional escape rooms initially crafted for entertainment or replicated within school and universities for educational use. DEERs, like that presented in this volume (see subsequent chapters), can be designed to orient students willing to explore university spaces and services through a virtual tour before visiting it physically. However, this transformation is not merely a replication of a physical escape room; instead, it necessitates adopting a different perspective, due to the digital dimension, along the design of gaming elements like structure, narrative development, and puzzle construction. These elements, as emphasized by Veldkamp et al. (2020), must significantly align with the learning or guidance goals. Furthermore, this harmonization requires intertwining game mechanics with pedagogical methodologies, demanding a design approach that is not only informed by pedagogy but also infused with fundamental game design principles. The aim of this contribution is to describe an approach for designing DEERs according to a pedagogical perspective." 

Reference 

Repetto, M. (2020). The design of Digital Educational Escape Rooms in Higher Education. Retrieved from https://iris.unito.it/bitstream/2318/1963474/1/BELLACICCO%20ET%20AL.%2015-2-60-74.pdf 

Keywords 

Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs), Pedagogy, Game Design