Escape rooms as tools for climate change education: an exploration of initiatives

In the last years we have observed a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches for climate change education. While most practices are related to digital gaming, there is a new trend which is still academically unexplored: escape rooms. The main objective of this paper is to serve as an initial exploratory study in this field by identifying and analysing climate change-related escape rooms. For that purpose we carried out a web search and a qualitative content analysis. A total of 17 initiatives are described and compared, unravelling their main audience, country of origin, topics, scenarios and objectives covered. The paper also highlights what escape rooms can offer to climate change education: experiential and immersive learning, problem solving and critical thinking skills, and a sense of collaboration and urgency

CyberEscape Approach to Advancing Hard and Soft Skills in Cybersecurity Education

Incorporating gamification elements and innovative approaches in training and educational programs are promising for addressing cybersecurity knowledge gaps. Cybersecurity training should consider a combination of hard and soft skills to deal with the diversity of cyber incidents. Therefore, this research aims to investigate if soft skills such as communication and collaboration enhances students’ performance in practical task execution and if the CyberEscape approach promotes students engagement and self-efficacy. This paper presents a cybersecurity game CyberEscape based on the intervention mapping methodology previously defined in the research. A virtualised infrastructure simulating the business environment works as a hybrid escape room. Physical resources and prepared information materials complement the game to support the scenario and ensure student engagement. The work employs a multiple-methods research approach. Participants filled out questionnaires in the pre-event and post-execution phases. Additionally, the participants were involved in small group semistructured interviews. Results of the pilot study show a positive impact on student competence improvement and increased interest in cybersecurity.acceptedVersio

CAN YOU TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS? AN EDUCATIONAL ESCAPE ROOM

Despite being a top healthcare priority, patient safety remains a problem in the U.S. with hundreds of thousands of annual patient deaths due to medical errors. Communication breakdowns within the healthcare team are a key factor in poor patient outcomes and in relatively low retention rates among healthcare professionals, especially nurses. To prepare nursing students for a successful entry into the profession, nurse educators must consider alternate strategies for teaching communication skills to a new generation of students. This qualitative study explored the use of a game-based escape room as part of a multi-part communication lesson plan and its impact on student perceptions of the value of communication in healthcare. The data for the current study was collected from a small sample of nursing students representing multiple generations at a Midwestern community college. The study found that the educational escape room raised awareness among nursing students of the importance of communication to a healthcare team. It also highlighted the greater affinity of younger students for immersive game approaches in education. These findings indicate the need and opportunity of including non-traditional teaching methods in nursing curriculum tailored for the unique learning profiles of a new generation of nursing students

Using the Internet to improve university education

Up to this point, university education has largely remained unaffected by the developments of novel approaches to web-based learning. The paper presents a principled approach to the design of problem-oriented, web-based learning at the university level. The principles include providing authentic contexts with multimedia, supporting collaborative knowledge construction, making thinking visible with dynamic visualisation, quick access to content resources via information and communication technologies, and flexible support by tele-tutoring. These principles are used in the MUNICS learning environment, which is designed to support students of computer science to apply their factual knowledge from the lectures to complex real-world problems. For example, students may model the knowledge management in an educational organisation with a graphical simulation tool. Some more general findings from a formative evaluation study with the MUNICS prototype are reported and discussed. For example, the students' ignorance of the additional content resources is discussed in the light of the well-known finding of insufficient use of help systems in software applications

Using the Internet to improve university education: Problem-oriented web-based learning and the MUNICS environment

Up to this point, university education has largely remained unaffected by the developments of novel approaches to web-based learning. The paper presents a principled approach to the design of problem-oriented, web-based learning at the university level. The principles include providing authentic contexts with multimedia, supporting collaborative knowledge construction, making thinking visible with dynamic visualisation, quick access to content resources via Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and flexible support by tele-tutoring. These principles are used in the Munich Net-based Learning In Computer Science (MUNICS) learning environment, which is designed to support students of computer science to apply their factual knowledge from the lectures to complex real-world problems. For example, students can model the knowledge management in an educational organisation with a graphical simulation tool. Some more general findings from a formative evaluation study with the MUNICS prototype are reported and discussed. E.g., the students' ignorance of the additional content resources is discussed in the light of the well-known finding of insufficient use of help systems in software applicationsBislang wurden neuere Ansätze zum web-basierten Lernen in nur geringem Maße zur Verbesserung des Universitätsstudiums genutzt. Es werden theoretisch begründete Prinzipien für die Gestaltung problemorientierter, web-basierter Lernumgebungen an der Universität formuliert. Zu diesen Prinzipien gehören die Nutzung von Multimedia-Technologien für die Realisierung authentischer Problemkontexte, die Unterstützung der gemeinsamen Wissenskonstruktion, die dynamische Visualisierung, der schnelle Zugang zu weiterführenden Wissensressourcen mit Hilfe von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien sowie die flexible Unterstützung durch Teletutoring. Diese Prinzipien wurden bei der Gestaltung der MUNICS Lernumgebung umgesetzt. MUNICS soll Studierende der Informatik bei der Wissensanwendung im Kontext komplexer praktischer Problemstellungen unterstützen. So können die Studierenden u.a. das Wissensmanagement in einer Bildungsorganisation mit Hilfe eines graphischen Simulationswerkzeugs modellieren. Es werden Ergebnisse einer formativen Evaluationsstudie berichtet und diskutiert. Beispielsweise wird die in der Studie festgestellte Ignoranz der Studierenden gegenüber den weiterführenden Wissensressourcen vor dem Hintergrund des häufig berichteten Befunds der unzureichenden Nutzung von Hilfesystemen beleuchte

UNLOCKing creative & innovative teaching in higher education extended abstracts

No abstract available.publishe

Advancing Team Cohesion: Using an Escape Room as a Novel Approach

Objective: An escape room was used to study teamwork and its determinants, which have been found to relate to the quality and safety of patient care delivery. This pilot study aimed to explore the value of an escape room as a mechanism for improving cohesion among interdisciplinary healthcare teams. Methods: This research was conducted at a nonprofit medical center in Southern California. All participants who work on a team were invited to participate. Authors employed an interrupted within-subjects design, with two pre- and post- escape room questionnaires related to two facets of group cohesion: (belonging – (PGC-B) and morale (PGC-M)). Participants rated their perceptions of group cohesion before, after, and one-month after the escape room. The main outcome measures included PGC-B/M. Results: Sixty-two teams participated (n 280 participants) of which 31 teams (50%) successfully “escaped” in the allotted 45 minutes. There was a statistically significant difference in PGC between the three time periods, F(4, 254) 24.10, p \u3c .001; Wilks’ K .725; partial g2 .275. Results indicated significantly higher scores for PGC immediately after the escape room and at the one-month follow-up compared to baseline. Conclusions: This work offers insights into the utility of using an escape room as a team building intervention in interprofessional healthcare teams. Considering the modifiability of escape rooms, they may function as valuable team building mechanisms in healthcare. More work is needed to determine how escape rooms compare to more traditional team building curriculums

UNBODY: A Poetry Escape Room in Augmented Reality

The integration of augmented reality (AR) technology into personal computing is happening fast, and augmented workplaces for professionals in areas such as Industry 4.0 or digital health can reasonably be expected to form liminal zones that push the boundary of what currently possible. The application potential in the creative industries, however, is vast and can target broad audiences, so with UNBODY, we set out to push boundaries of a different kind and depart from the graphic-centric worlds of AR to explore textual and aural dimensions of an extended reality, in which words haunt and re-create our physical selves. UNBODY is an AR installation for smart glasses that embeds poetry in the user’s surroundings. The augmented experience turns reality into a medium where holographic texts and film clips spill from dayglow billboards and totems. In this paper, we develop a blueprint for an AR escape room dedicated to the spoken and written word, with its open source code facilitating uptake by others into existing or new AR escape rooms. We outline the user-centered process of designing, building, and evaluating UNBODY. More specifically, we deployed a system usability scale (SUS) and a spatial interaction evaluation (SPINE) in order to validate its wider applicability. In this paper, we also describe the composition and concept of the experience, identifying several components (trigger posters, posters with video overlay, word dropper totem, floating object gallery, and a user trail visualization) as part of our first version before evaluation. UNBODY provides a sense of situational awareness and immersivity from inside an escape room. The recorded average mean for the SUS was 59.7, slightly under the recommended 68 average but still above ‘OK’ in the zone of low marginal acceptable. The findings for the SPINE were moderately positive, with the highest scores for output modalities and navigation support. This indicated that the proposed components and escape room concept work. Based on these results, we improved the experience, adding, among others, an interactive word composer component. We conclude that a poetry escape room is possible, outline our co-creation process, and deliver an open source technical framework as a blueprint for adding enhanced support for the spoken and written word to existing or coming AR escape room experiences. In an outlook, we discuss additional insight on timing, alignment, and the right level of personalization