THE GREAT ESCAPE? TEAM BUILDING SOLUTIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Gamification is the use of game-design elements and game principles (dynamics and mechanics) in non-game contexts to increase user engagement and develop user skills. Numerous studies have shown that gamification can be used effectively to build employee relationships at work, improve their social connections, and thus increase their commitment to the workplace. The COVID-19 pandemic, by limiting face-to-face communications, has presented a number of challenges and called for new solutions to motivate employees and build and maintain workplace relationships. Escape rooms were a popular team-building gamification solution, which also appeared on online platforms during the lockdowns. In this work, the authors use user data from a gamified online application to investigate changes during the outbreak. In parallel, they analyse user data from an online escape room platform to explore the extent to which workplaces have taken advantage of this new virtual team-building solution to break employees out of the monotony. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Educational Escape Room Analysis Using Learning Styles

Teachers often need to adapt their teaching methodologies in order to overcome possible limitations and ensure that education does not lose quality in the face of different scenarios that may arise in the educational environment, which are not always the most desirable. Techniques such as the Educational Escape Room (ERE) in higher education, are taking a great increase due to its popularity among young people as a leisure activity. This study shows an educational research based on the application of a Digital Educational Escape Room (DEER) to respond to the limitations of hybrid teaching with students divided between the classroom and their homes. Through the analysis of a control group, with a traditional lecture class, and an experimental group with the use of a pretest and a posttest, with the addition of studying the different learning styles of the students in each group, interesting results and conclusions have been obtained that offer a replicability of this technique for other fields and educational modalities.

Building an Escape Room to Raise Awareness of Bullying and Cyberbullying

Aggressive conflicts are part of the natural social behavior of students in schools, which can lead to bullying when there is a form of discrimination or abuse of power, either because of their characteristics or their way of life (sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, health, disability, religious beliefs, pregnancy, among others). In the face-to-face mode, the aggressors could be identified and in some way the conflicts were mediated by teachers or authorities of the institution. However, since education changed to a virtual modality caused by the global coronavirus pandemic, new forms of aggressive behavior have emerged with cyberbullying. In this new scenario teachers, parents and law enforcement should take an active role in raising awareness about bullying and cyberbullying. The main objective of this paper is to describe a proposal based on gamification strategy to prevent and raise awareness of aggressive behaviors among students in a virtual environment. The study focuses on three objectives: a) to study the use of visual methods based on microlearning and the techniques to engage students;b) to identify game scenarios and strategies to design an interactive Escape Room;and c) to evaluate the design and content with three experts in psychology. The results indicate that the Escape Room is a different alternative to understand the problems derived from Bullying and cyberbullying. In the future, we are planning to carry out an intervention with students from Ecuador and Colombia to evaluate the impact. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Virtual toxicology escape room: A novel method for providing toxicology education

Background: The Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic led to unprecedented changes to medical education as educators adapted to a world necessitating precautions and social distancing. In response to the pandemic, the Emergency Medicine Residents' Association (EMRA) committees' educational programming in association with the American College of Emergency Physicians 2020 Scientific Assembly (ACEP20), initially scheduled to be held in Dallas, TX, between October 26-29, 2020, transitioned to a fully virtual conference. Escape rooms have become popular recreational activities over the last several years. In-person escape rooms are structured around working in teams to solve a series of puzzles in a fictional scenario that allows participants to "escape" the room upon completion. The teamwork and problem-solving skills utilized in escape rooms lend themselves to use in medical education. The traditional in-person escape room format has previously been applied to toxicology for the purposes of providing engaging toxicology education to emergency medicine (EM) residents. Method(s): The researchers developed and led the first nationwide virtual toxicology escape room during ACEP20 using the Zoom platform. The activities consisted of one web-portal linking to a sequence of four Google Forms multiple-choice question quizzes and four games made on Wordwall.net, a virtual educational activity creator. Six teams of 5 residents and medical students from residency programs across the country registered and participated for a total of 30 participants. Teams were split into Zoom breakout rooms, each moderated by at least one medical toxicologist and/or medical toxicology fellow. A survey was sent to participants to assess their overall experience with the activity. Result(s): Every team completed all eight activities within 45 min. This activity demonstrates the feasibility of a large-scale, realtime competitive virtual escape room to engage participants and deliver toxicology education. The lessons learned from exploring virtual sessions like this one will be valuable tools in the future of medical education. Ten participants completed the survey. 80% of respondents reported that the event increased their interest in toxicology. 90% agreed that the format was easy to navigate, instructions were clear, questions were understandable, and toxicologists were well utilized in the event. Conclusion(s): Toxicology-themed escape rooms have potential as virtual activities to educate EM residents on essential toxicology knowledge. While the small survey response rate limits the generalizability of this data, these initial results are promising and suggest that virtual escape rooms may be a viable option for increasing interest in toxicology among resident physicians.

Migration of an Escape Room-Style Educational Game to an Online Environment: Design Thinking Methodology.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has led to a sudden change in education, closing schools and shifting to online teaching, which has become an enormous challenge for teachers and students. Implementing adequate online pedagogical approaches and integrating different digital tools in the teaching process have become a priority in educational systems. Finding a way to keep students' interest and persistence in learning is an important issue that online education is facing. One possible way to establish engaging and interactive learning environments, using the energy and enthusiasm of students for educational purposes, is the use of game-based learning activities and gamification of different parts of the educational process. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a use case of migrating an escape room-style educational game to an online environment by using the design thinking methodology. We wanted to show that the design thinking methodology is useful to create engaging and motivating online games that provide educational value. METHODS: Starting from students' perspective, we created a simple digital escape room-style game where students got an opportunity to self-assess their knowledge in computer science at their own pace. Students tested this prototype game, and their opinions about the game were collected through an online survey. The test's goal was to evaluate the students' perceptions about the implemented digital escape room-style educational game and gather information about whether it could achieve students' engagement in learning computer science during online teaching. RESULTS: In total, 117 students from sixth and seventh grades completed the survey regarding the achieved student engagement. Despite the differences in students' answers about game complexity and puzzle difficulty, most students liked the activity (mean 4.75, SD 0.67, on a scale from 1 to 5). They enjoyed the game, and they would like to participate in this kind of activity again (mean 4.74, SD 0.68). All (n=117, 100%) students found the digital escape room-style educational game interesting for playing and learning. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirmed that digital escape room-style games could be used as an educational tool to engage students in the learning process and achieve learning outcomes. Furthermore, the design thinking methodology proved to be a useful tool in the process of adding novel educational value to the digital escape room-style game.

A Web-Based Escape Room to Raise Awareness About Severe Mental Illness Among University Students: Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: People with severe mental illness (SMI) face discriminatory situations because of prejudice toward them, even among health care personnel. Escape rooms can be a novel educational strategy for learning about and empathizing with SMI, thus reducing stigma among health care students. Objective: This study aimed to examine the effect of the Without Memories escape room on nursing students’ stigma against SMI. Methods: A pre- and postintervention study was conducted with a control group and an experimental group. A total of 306 students from 2 Andalusian universities participated in the study. Data were collected through a pre-post study questionnaire, consisting of an adapted version of the Attributional Style Questionnaire and a questionnaire on motivation for cooperative playful learning strategies. The control group carried out an escape room scenario without sensitizing content, whereas the experimental group carried out an escape room scenario on SMI, with both escape rooms being carried out in a 1-hour session of subjects related to mental health. To answer the research questions, a 2-way analysis of variance with repeated measures, a linear regression, and a 2-way analysis of variance were performed. Results: After the intervention, a significant reduction (P<.001) was observed in the experimental group in stigmatizing attitudes compared with the control group, in which no statistically significant changes (P>.05) were observed. In contrast, the linear regression (t195=−22.15;P<.001) showed that there was an inverse relationship between flow and the level of reduced stigma. When controlling for having or not having a close relative, the intervention was also shown to be effective (P<.001) in reducing the stigma displayed, both for people with affected and unaffected relatives. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the Without Memories escape room can be used as an effective tool to educate and raise awareness about stigmatizing attitudes toward SMI in university students studying health care. Future testing of the effectiveness of educational escape rooms should be designed with new programs through playful strategies of longer duration to evaluate whether they can achieve a greater impact on motivation, acquisition of knowledge, and awareness. In addition, the feasibility of implementing the Without Memories escape room in other careers related to health and community should be investigated.

Escape Passive Learning: 10 steps to Building an Escape Room

Escape rooms have become a popular way to engage students in active learning and provide innovative ways to learn. This article provides an overview of escape room use and outcomes from the higher education literature and describes their use at a large US midwestern college of nursing nurse practitioner program. Recommendations regarding design, implementation and evaluation are reviewed, and a 10-step process is shared to summarize how faculty can develop their escape room.

Toward the Implementation of Escape Room Games in an Educational Context

During the last decade, escape rooms have become a popular place of amusement. Escape the Room is best described as a combination of LARP (Live Action Role Play), scavenger hunt, and Sherlock Holmes. The players are immersed in a scenario and have a set amount of time to solve a variety of puzzles using the materials and information provided to move from one room to the next until they can finally leave the building. While escape rooms are mainly deployed for team-building activities or entertainment, there are further fields of application. In an interdisciplinary project at Johannes Kepler University Linz, we adapted escape rooms for educational purposes. The Institute of Business Informatics - Software Engineering and the School of Education developed three escape room games designed to impart the principles of computer science to a younger audience in a fun way. The players can select a board game, a computer game, or a real-life game, each with its unique story, puzzles, and hints. The game variants focus on computer science but can be expanded and adapted to other subjects. As all the constructions and puzzles show a flexible design, they can be adapted to the educational level of the respective target group (primary level, secondary I + II, teacher training, and university courses) and abilities of students. Each game contains additional bonus material for experienced players. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the test phase of all three escape room game variants was postponed but is planned to continue in autumn 2021.

The Geriatric Virtual Escape Room in Pharmacy Education: Female Students Escape Significantly Faster than Male Students.

Due to COVID-19 and the limitation of face-face teaching, electronic adaptation for formative and continuous assessment methods were greatly used and documented between 2020 and 2021. This study aims to implement a virtual escape room that will help assist and refine problem-solving skills in fifth-year pharmacy students by reviewing Beer's criteria and selecting the most appropriate management. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted following the implementation of the virtual escape room using google form. Students had to unlock five puzzles using Beer's criteria. To evaluate pharmacy students' perception of this method, they completed a survey to identify their views of the game. Of the 128 students enrolled in the geriatric course, all were able to escape (100%). A one-sample t-test indicated statistical significance between gender. Female students escaped statistically faster than male students (p < 0.00002) and were more likely to recommend the game to other students and thought the game encouraged them to think of the material in a new way, whereas male students were more neutral towards it. In conclusion, the geriatric virtual escape room was successfully implemented as a pilot innovative method to assist in virtual learning. However, future studies should investigate virtual gamification in pharmacy education and its impact on learning, as well as identify if there were any gender-specific differences in using these tools.

Proposal for escape room II "Coronavirus COVID-19" in primary school students

COVID-19 has triggered a global epidemic emergency that poses several challenges for the development of Physical Education in the Primary Education stage. One of these challenges was the development of the school period from homes (Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14). Faced with this scenario, the manuscript "Escape Room" Coronavirus COVID-19 "in Primary School students arose." Under an Action-Research (I-A) design, this escape room composed of six sessions was developed, the objective of which was to improve the nutritional habits and body competence for the health of the students. Due to spatial limitations, only the first session could be addressed. Therefore, this manuscript aims to develop the proposal for session II of the escape room in order to exemplify a health education with educational content in the physical field;levels of physical activity, heart rate, CORE and alignment of the human spine.

Implementation of a virtual escape room mock code to comply with social distancing.

BACKGROUND: Despite a global pandemic with social distancing regulations, nurses must continue to participate in continuing education to ensure competency for the care they provide. Mock codes are common yearly competencies that nurses must participate in to grow their critical thinking and show mastery of the skills. Maintaining mock codes which were usually in person, became a struggle in order to comply with social distancing. METHOD: A virtual escape room mock code was implemented as a substitute for in-person education to sustain continued education during a time of social distancing. The aim was to determine if the virtual sessions met the perceived expectations of the nurses in comparison to previous in-person sessions. The session was designed based upon the Community of Inquiry framework for participants to work together in a meaningful capacity. After completion of the session, a survey which included an adaption of the Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning Survey, was disseminated to pediatric and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) nurses to gauge their satisfaction and perceptions compared to an in-person method. RESULTS: Results indicated that the nurses felt satisfaction and self-confidence in learning and that virtual session provided equal education as compared to previous in-person sessions. CONCLUSION: The virtual escape room mock code engaged the nursing staff in an interactive educational opportunity which fulfilled their annual competency requirement.

Fighting viruses though escape room design with students

The first countermeasure against new waves of the pandemic is diffused science knowledge about what viruses are and how they harm our body. Can the design of a game offer suitable opportunities for relevant science learning about viruses? Moreover, can it contribute to the development of collaboration and communication soft skills, central both for academic success and in real life? This paper reports a case study of a mixed-class group of lower-secondary students in a Swiss Italian-speaking rural school that engaged in the design and development of an educational escape room on viruses during a project week. The paper illustrates how the activities were organized following the Star Model for the design of educational escape rooms, how roles were distributed among pupils and teachers, and what scaffolding was offered in order to blend content and game design, so to achieve a scientifically precise and at the same time fun game. The game design experience has been evaluated through (a) the pre-post assessment of teamwork and leadership self-efficacy;(b) the pre-post assessment of science knowledge about viruses;and (c) an interview with the teacher. The case study illustrated that, while self-efficacy variations are minimal but still positive, designing an educational escape room with pupils can be conducive to relevant subject-matter learning and team building. © The Authors, 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Ready Patient One: How to Turn an In-Person Critical Care Simulation Scenario Into an Online Serious Game.

Introduction Serious gaming has become popular in healthcare education as an engaging way to train learners. When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) forced the cancellation of in-person simulation sessions, we designed a serious game to deliver content in an interactive format with no out-of-pocket expense. We describe the design process and game reception so that others may replicate it. Methods We designed an online game using Choose-Your-Own-Adventure (CYOA) and Escape Room concepts. Using online survey software, we presented an interactive story based on an existing simulation scenario and included interactive puzzles as roadblocks to scenario progression. Each puzzle represented a critical care concept, and many contained hyperlinks to prior basic science lecture material to reinforce learning. A post-game survey assessed students' experience. Results All (N=88) students enrolled in a scheduled simulation session participated in the game, and 75% (66/88) responded to a post-participation survey. All respondents (100%) were able to complete the game. The majority (57.6%) completed the game in 30 minutes to 1 hour. Most students strongly agreed or agreed that the game enhanced their understanding of critical care concepts (93.9-97.0%), and that they were interested in doing more CYOA games (90.9%). Conclusion The game was well-received, delivered critical care content, and challenged students to apply basic science principles to medical decision-making from the safety of their own homes. The game was self-guided, requiring minimal active facilitator involvement. We plan to expand the use of the game to other settings and explore its use in formative/summative assessment and remediation.

Delivering a Novel Medical Education "Escape Room" at a National Scientific Conference: First Live, Then Pivoting to Remote Learning Because of COVID-19.

Escape Rooms are gaining prominence as education modalities; the use of principles of game design have been shown to augment knowledge acquisition in a fun, team-based learning experience ("edutainment"). In this report, we outline some of the medical literature and then provide our step-by-step approach and lessons learned when building what was, to our knowledge, the first continuing medical education Escape Room at a national scientific meeting. We then comment on how this innovative educational offering was reimagined the following year for remote (virtual) learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Applying active learning in a virtual classroom such as a molecular biology escape room.

The transition to remote-teaching online for Molecular Biology has forced active learning exercises like Escape Rooms to also move online. In the past, Escape Rooms have been an effective tool for students to help reinforce concepts they learned in Molecular Biology. We propose that there is a way for Escape Rooms to be moved to an online setting and still be an effective avenue for students to learn the material in a fun and interactive way.