Create an Online Escape Room

ABSTRACT
In this article, the author describes an exam review activity in which students answered questions and solved puzzles in order to escape the review session. In a general psychology (100-level) course and research methods in psychology (300-level) course, students solved a series of puzzles and review questions. This format is similar to popular escape room attractions. Finally, the first group to sing a song that would appease the evil professor was allowed to leave the review session. Perceptions of the escape room were positive and concepts questioned in the review game were retained better than concepts that were not included.

ABSTRACT
Background: Creating innovative online instruction was essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article high¬lights an engaging, online escape room (OER) educational innovation used to teach patient safety to first-semester nursing students. Method: Utilizing constructivist and adult learning theories, the OER, developed using Google Forms, consisted of gamification. Students completed puzzles re¬lated to a patient safety scenario presented via text, photo¬graph, audio, and video to promote critical thinking and de¬cision making. Results: Review of student reflections, test scores, and survey results determined the OER was effective to develop the student’s understanding of the nurse’s role in patient safety to include identification of safety concerns and appropriate interventions. Conclusion: Using Google forms, educators can create an OER for various topics to en¬hance student engagement and critical thinking skills. The OER can be supplemental instruction or an alternative for clinical and simulation instruction when online learning is mandated. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(8):466-469.]

ABSTRACT
Searching and interacting with information is one of the most fundamental behaviours of human beings – something that takes place in both online and physical environments. Yet, most studies of information interaction have focused on only one of these sides. This work aims to connect them by investigating one’s information interaction behaviours in different physical and online contexts as well as different types of tasks. During Web search (online searching) and Escape Room (physical searching), 31 participants’ behavioural data during web search (online searching) and escape room (physical searching) were collected through eye-tracker, web browser logs, and wearable video recorder. Analysis of the behavioural data suggests that individuals have a preferred search strategy that they adopt across different tasks and environments. The behavioural pattern, however, was found to be affected by the task type (e.g. problem searching vs exploratory search) and the way information is structured within the environments.

ABSTRACT
Background. Perioperative nursing is expected to see a 20% reduction in the workforce due to retirement within five (5) years. To recruit and retain nurses within this specialty, the Association of Operating Room Nurses (AORN) Periop 101: Core Curriculum™ OR was added to an existing nurse residency program. Periop 101 is an online learning program providing evidence-based guidelines for practice and requires the learner to pass a final exam with a score of 80% or higher. Following a didactic final exam review session, most nurse residents at a midwestern community hospital failed to pass the final exam on their first attempt.

Aim. To address this knowledge gap, the clinical educators decided to create a more interactive review session by creating an escape room. Current literature supports the use of escape rooms to increase knowledge and learner engagement.

Method. Nurse residents participate in Operation Outbreak during the exam review session. A convenience sample of twenty-two (22) registered nurses were included in the quality improvement project. Group one consisted of 18 participants who received only the didactic review session. Group two had four participants who participated in the didactic review session as well as the Operation Outbreak escape room.

Results/Conclusion. Overall, there was improvement in the average final exam scores and average percentage of residents to pass the exam on the first attempt after the addition of the escape room. Statistical analysis was not performed due to sample limitations.

ABSTRACT
Background. Clinical learning activities in a pre-licensure nursing program are challenging to rapidly convert to an online format due to their objectives to provide hands-on practice. Previously, students spent their final day of pharmacology participating in low-fidelity lab based, simulated pharmacology activities. Due to a public health crisis, the instructional team had to quickly change course to create an equally engaging virtual activity that provided opportunities for clinical judgment.

Aim. In this article, we discuss a virtual pharmacology escape room created using Google forms for pre-licensure nursing students prior to their final pharmacology course exam. The learning objectives were to review difficult course concepts by making clinical decisions and to practice using medication protocols.

Methods. The design and evaluation of a virtual pharmacology escape room are presented to reflect a learner centered approach. Key considerations when designing the escape room were to best use the students’ time, to focus on content frequently missed on exams by the student cohort, and to include medication protocols commonly encountered during the clinical part of their program.

Results. Surveys provided positive feedback from learners along with suggestions for strengthening future escape room activities. Most students reported the activity provided opportunities for clinical judgment and was helpful for learning.

ABSTRACT
Escape room games have gained in popularity in both entertainment and education venues over the past several year. The global health pandemic put an abrupt end to in-person escape room programs due to the enclosed space in which they take place. In an attempt to continue to utilize the escape room concept we set about to create a virtual escape room using commonly available software and assessed its usability and participant feelings about the experience. The results indicated that the participants thought the escape room was engaging (88%), that they had to work as a team (95%), and that they overall enjoyed the experience (85%). Virtual experiences cannot completely replace in-person experiences, but there are ways to introduce important teamwork and communication concepts to participants and make online meetings and conferences more engaging.

ABSTRACT
Mobile app escape games are excellent tools to create an experiential learning process in online contexts. Through the act of solving puzzles to escape the rooms, students experience a process in which they need to discover new information and clues, adjust their strategies repeatedly, and become more aware of the way they learn. Their emotional and behavioral reactions when they encounter difficulties can shed light on their learning identity and learning flexibility. The experiential learning cycle is complete with the addition of after-game reflection, debrief, and discussion. Escape games are versatile and can be used to teach a variety of topics, such as problem-solving, creative thinking, teamwork, and leadership, in any kind of classroom, with any population of students. This article provides an overview of mobile app escape games, how instructors could use them in class, and examples of topics, games, and debrief questions to use.

ABSTRACT
An online virtual escape-room game was created using the Google Forms survey app for an undergraduate chemistry lab class. Zoom video conferencing service was used to make the activity a collaborative learning experience. The theme was an escape from an abandoned chocolate factory, and the students solved problems to move to the next section or “room” on the Google Forms survey.

ABSTRACT
Introduction
Even with paramedicine’s evolution, clinical decision-making will always be a crucial learning and teaching requirement. As part of their learning, paramedic students need to develop critical thinking and collaborative approaches with others. The aim was to review the literature around escape room activity as a pedagogical approach for paramedic education. The intent is to contribute to the discussion around authentic and engaging approaches to teaching clinical thinking and decision making in paramedicine.

Methods
A systematic review was undertaken to review existing literature on using this approach in higher education. EBSCO, Medline, CINAHL, ScienceDirect, ProQuest and PubMed were used to review paramedic and health education strategies using the keywords ‘paramedic and education’, ‘ambulance and education’, ‘paramedic and training’ and ‘health education and higher education curriculum’. Specific education databases were used for a more targeted search with specific keywords used (‘Escape Room’ OR ‘Escape Game’ OR ‘Puzzle Room’ AND ‘Higher Education’). The education databases Education Research Complete, Emerald, Elsevier, ERIC and Teacher Reference Center were used, with Google Scholar also being used for its vast breadth of coverage.

Results
There were 23 scholarly papers examining the use of escape rooms in an educational context found. There was no reference to using this teaching methodology in paramedicine, but some health contexts were identified for nursing, pharmacy, radiology and medicine.

Conclusion
With an instructional design that addresses logistical requirements, educational escape rooms can be used effectively in paramedic higher education. This review highlights a longitudinal study is needed to assess an educational escape room’s implementation into the paramedic higher education curriculum. A longitudinal, multi-university study can further explore the feasibility of using a blended online/offline escape room activity in large enrolment paramedic programs.

ABSTRACT
Effective teamwork in the online environment is essential to patient care and safety. The need for training health professionals to work together on a virtual interprofessional team has become even more important since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as telehealth, or the provision of virtual healthcare to patients, has become more common. This resource describes the development of an online escape room activity using free online resources. The activity aimed to enhance health profession students’ _abilities to communicate effectively, work together to complete a task, and develop knowledge of the unique roles of healthcare team members in a course dedicated to interprofessional education. Teams of five to seven students met online and completed seven puzzles to escape a virtual room. Results obtained from the pre-post surveys of 176 students across six disciplines showed the activity aided in increasing participants perceptions of their ability to communicate respectfully and work together to complete a task, while developing knowledge of the unique roles of members of the healthcare team, all components of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Core Competencies. This activity lays the groundwork for collaborative, interprofessional activities, such as telehealth, which students will be exposed to in their futures, and the results infer that the activity can help to build collaboration among team members, even team members that are not in the same physical space.

ABSTRACT
Digital and physical escape rooms have been suggested as practical and effective approaches to game-based learning and have recently gained momentum. The deficit of scholarly works that simultaneously implement both types of escape rooms legitimizes this study’s significance and appropriateness. The researchers systematically combined digital and physical escape rooms and integrated them into fifth-grade science lessons (experimental group N = 22; control group N = 21). Considering that creative thinking is one of the essential competencies in the competitive world, learning motivation is a crucial factor contributing to students’ learning, and academic achievement is a criterion for learning outcomes. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration), the Learning Motivation Scale (value, expectation, affect, and executive volition), and the science achievement exam were used to quantitatively investigate students’ learning effectiveness. The results indicated that the experimental group’s creative thinking and learning motivation outperformed the control group significantly. Nonetheless, both groups showed no significant difference in science academic achievement. The present study verifies that a digital–physical combined escape room is an effective and practical approach that has the potential to be widely used in schools to benefit students’ learning. Some discussions, educational implications, and suggestions for future studies and practices are offered.

ABSTRACT
Confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened an educational shift from face-to-face to online classrooms. This distanced education seeks to achieve learning goals mediated by technology as they would be achieved in the face-to-face classroom, without ignoring the psychological and social impact that COVID-19 has had on students and teachers. Faced with this situation, the use of online educational escape rooms has been proposed as a motivating strategy for students to review curriculum content in a cooperative and fun way. A qualitative investigation was carried out to explore the perceptions of university students in the Social Education degree program after the implementation of an educational escape room. Our main findings are that most students found that it allowed them to interact with their peers beyond traditional education, that it was useful for their learning and that it was a pleasant activity. However, it was also mentioned that it can be a stressful activity as being an online activity, some students may have connectivity problems. It is concluded that online escape rooms can be active and effective learning strategies for university students.

ABSTRACT
Background: Currently, there are still prejudices and negative beliefs towards people with severe mental disorder. The stigma of healthcare professionals can affect both recovery time and patients’ own self-stigma. In universities, it is necessary to reduce these prejudices through training on mental health.

Purpose: The purpose of this research has been to assess the use of educational escape rooms as a learning and awareness strategy on stigmatizing attitudes towards people with serious mental disorders in university students.

Methods: An online escape room has been designed whose narrative shows the daily life of a person with a serious mental illness. An exploratory qualitative study has been carried out to explore the perception of 44 university students from two Andalusian universities about this escape room.

Results: The results of the study show that most of the interviewed students consider that the educational escape room has been a fun and motivating learning strategy, which has allowed them to learn cooperatively and empathize with the protagonist with a mental disorder.

Conclusion: Online escape rooms can be a useful strategy for teaching health sciences students. Considering it a fun activity, students are more participatory and engaged to the curricular content, in our case, stigmatizing attitudes towards people with serious mental disorders.

ABSTRACT
In this project, an online escape game for older adults was developed collaboratively with five novice developers and 12 older adults who tested the prototype game at several stages of the development process. We followed a User-Centered Design (UCD) process to develop the game. During the design process, older adults tested the game and it was refined based on their feedback and the research team’s observation of their play. We found that incorporating older adults into the design process significantly improved the design, as they provided insights that would not have been available otherwise. We also concluded that the older adults’ involvement in the design process could make the game better tailored to their needs. The game is currently being field-tested.