A lot of research has been published over the last decade on incorporating Escape Rooms as an innovative pedagogical activity in your classroom. Escape rooms are collaborative and problem-solving, offering an engaging and critical thinking-enhancing experience. Situating students in problem-solving scenarios that require active engagement promotes situational learning and develops emotional intelligence. A well-designed Escape Room can foster active, contextual, and collaborative learning about any subject matter.
This year, several Al Haadi teachers have incorporated variations of Escape Rooms for both teaching, formative, and summative assessment purposes. This innovative approach has not only changed the dynamics of the classroom but also brought a fresh perspective to the educational process.
One of the most significant benefits of using Escape Rooms in education is the heightened level of student engagement. Traditional pedagogical approaches can sometimes fail to capture students’ attention, but Escape Rooms turn learning into an adventure. By presenting challenges that need to be solved within a set time, students are motivated to focus and participate actively. This gamified learning approach taps into their natural desire for play, competition, and achievement.
Escape Rooms require teamwork. Students must communicate effectively, delegate tasks, and leverage each other’s strengths to solve the puzzles. This collaborative environment mirrors real-world scenarios where teamwork and communication are key to success. Escape Rooms are also all about problem-solving. These problems can be tailored to any subject, from math and science to history and language. By engaging in these activities, students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. They learn to approach problems methodically, think outside the box, and persist in the face of challenges.
Innovatively, Al Haadi teachers have used Escape Rooms not just for teaching but also for assessments. This approach can transform the often stressful experience of tests into a more engaging and less intimidating process. It allows teachers to assess not just the students’ knowledge of the subject matter, but also their application, critical thinking, and teamwork skills.
Another advantage of Escape Rooms is their adaptability. They can be designed to suit any age group, subject, and learning objective. We have utilized Escape Rooms from our Kindergarten class to our middle school class. Whether it’s a simple puzzle for young children to learn basic phonics or a complex scenario for older students to explore the Canadian governance systems, Escape Rooms can be tailored to meet diverse educational needs.
The Design Process
Sometimes a teacher can find an already-designed Escape Room resource online, but alternatively, we can design one from scratch. One Escape Room we developed was for our Grade 5 Social Studies class. The game was called The Quest for the Charter and the objective was to assess grade 5 students’ grasp of the workings of the Canadian government, in particular the three levels: provincial, federal, and municipal as per Ontario’s curriculum expectations. First we outlined five key questions around the topics of levels of government, how laws are legislated, the parliament, and the Canadian constitution and came up with specific answers that I wanted the students to know the answers for. I then began to design five challenges that would be built through Google Forms, with some challenges having multiple parts.
We needed to start the game with easier challenges, gradually moving towards challenges that required more than just rote memorization of the material covered in class. For this reason, the first two questions in the game are relatively easier, namely, extracting an answer from a YouTube video and identifying which level of government is responsible for certain locations highlighted on a customized Google Map. The next few questions become more difficult, where students must take a virtual tour of the parliament, read through a section of the Constitution, and be able to order the process of passing a bill in Canada.
After designing the game, it is also important to beta-test it, and for us the beta-testing phase was crucial in refining the game. The game was tested on several other students as well as some adults. By giving these individuals a chance to play the game, we were able to make a few important changes to the game-play, before we could roll it out and use it as an assessment tool.
