When the Puzzle Is the Training: Designing Escape Rooms as Experiential Learning

Escape rooms aren’t new, and neither is the idea of leveraging them for classrooms or professional development. What is fresh is treating escape rooms not as a trendy wrapper for content but as a deliberate experiential learning method where the puzzles themselves are the training. In our work designing educational escape rooms across sectors — from higher education to corporate L&D — we’ve seen this approach consistently increase engagement, deepen learning, and generate evidence of impact you can actually measure.

From incidental learning to intentional outcomes

Entertainment-focused escape rooms often spark incidental learning: you discover things about teamwork, problem-solving, and yourself (perhaps that your competitive streak surfaces under pressure!). But the core actions—finding a four-digit code, matching it to a red lock, and opening a box—rarely map to explicit learning outcomes.

In educational escape rooms, we flip this: the puzzle mechanics become the skill practice. If your learning goal is conflict management, the “lock” isn’t a keypad; it’s a branching dialogue that requires learners to recognise triggers, practice de-escalation moves, and sequence responses. Solving the puzzle demands that they use conflict strategies—not simply recall a definition. By the time they “unlock” the solution, they’ve rehearsed the target behaviours in context.

This design approach applies across sectors and learning goals, from developing interpersonal skills (e.g. communication, collaboration), specialised knowledge (e.g. software debugging, mathematics, systems workflows), and even compliance competencies (e.g. accessibility). The difference is purposefulness: learners are not doing training and then completing puzzles about it; the puzzles are the training.

Why experiential learning fits (and sticks)

Experiential learning works because people learn by doing. In an educational escape room, learners act, reflect, iterate, and try again—inside a safe, low-risk environment. Combining experiential learning with escape room design has several benefits:

1. Active practice beats passive exposure. Learners apply concepts to move forward. They don’t just watch a video about negotiation; they try it out, receive feedback / experience the consequence, and adjust.
2. Contextualised evidence of progress. Experiential escape rooms provide opportunities to make learning observable and measurable in contextualised ways. The first part of that sentence shouldn’t be altogether surprising; there are several unique and interesting metrics we can leverage to assess learning and progress through escape room play. That said, the second part of that sentence is what we find most valuable. Simply assessing completion of a puzzle isn’t as good as being able to observe and measure the development of a skill or map learners on a spectrum of competence and plan for individualised learning pathways that directly tie back to specific learning goals or business objectives.
3. Motivation and engagement. Playful and intentionally storied/contextualised challenges pull learners into the work; the experience itself is not only fun, it is storied in such a way that the learner can more easily understand its real-world applications. That said, it’s important to communicate the why and the ROI to learners in this context. Strategic onboarding helps build trust and support learner motivation: letting the learner know the purpose up front (what the experience will help them learn/do and why they should care).
   
   

The crucial distinction with experiential learning escape rooms is that it’s designed for learning by doing: learning happens by engaging in the experience.  There is no “skip ahead and just get to the quiz question.”

Tailored to your context

One reason escape rooms work across OEB’s diverse audience is design agility:

• Modality: in-person, hybrid, fully virtual, or fully asynchronous.
• Cadence: one hour, a single day, a weeklong sprint, or a multi-month experience where complexity increases over time.
• Collaboration model: solo play, small groups for peer learning, or cross-department play to require handoffs and perspective-sharing.
• Puzzle architecture: sequential (linear, dependent steps) for cumulative mastery, modular sets that feed a culminating “meta-puzzle,” and more!
  
  

This flexibility makes escape rooms a practical option whether you’re supporting a single course outcome, onboarding a new system, or advancing organisation-wide competencies.

A quick example: practising conflict management

Imagine you’re an HR or L&D lead tasked with improving conflict skills. In an educational escape room, a multi-step puzzle might ask learners to:

• Identify the conflict type by analysing brief chat transcripts and meeting notes.
• Choose from calibrated response options (validate, reframe, inquire, assert boundary) under time pressure.
• Sequence a resolution path (acknowledge → clarify interests → co-design next steps) to earn the “key.”

Success requires applying the framework correctly; errors unlock reflection prompts or modelled alternatives. Completion data shows which steps were strong, where rework occurred, and who needed hints. In other words, evidence you can act on.

Purpose first in design & play

Novelty can attract attention, but without a clear learning purpose that interest quickly fades (or worse, turns to frustration for wasted time). Purpose is both the most essential design element and a key to effective facilitation.  We recommend telling learners explicitly why they’re doing an escape room and how it will help them. This builds trust and learner engagement by communicating a respect for their time: the experience is designed to be useful, memorable, and actionable, not just entertaining or novel. That clarity fights the common training critique — “this could have been a quiz.” Activities should have a distinct benefit over passive alternatives. 

Designing for evidence

If you care about demonstrating impact, treat the build like any rigorous learning design:

• Define measurable competencies. What will “good” look like in observable terms?
• Map mechanics to outcomes. Each puzzle’s required action should reflect the learning goal(s).
• Instrument for data. Decide which signals matter—accuracy, strategy choice, retries, collaboration moves—and capture them. Design so the signals mean something.
• Close the loop. Provide player feedback during and after the experience. Communicate outcomes to relevant decision-makers and interest-holders to clarify impact and support future course, program, or business decisions.
  
  

In live sessions, facilitators can note decision points, collaboration patterns, and strategy shifts. In hybrid or asynchronous builds, platform data (choice logs, time-on-task, hint usage, attempt histories) becomes rich analytics on competency growth. As with all learning metrics, intentional design and clarity of purpose is key. Crucially, measurement is designed in, not bolted on. We plan for which actions will signal learning, how we’ll capture them, and how feedback loops return that information to learners and stakeholders.

When measurement is intentional, escape rooms become not only engaging learning tools, but also diagnostic engines for individual and organisational growth (i.e. mapping where we’ve come and where we might still go in terms of our training and development).

Narrative as an anchor for transfer

Story isn’t decoration. Narrative is a learning device that positions the problem, cues relevance, and supports role-taking. A strong narrative lets learners adopt perspectives (the project lead, the regulator, the client), practice situated judgment, and test choices in a consequence-rich but low-risk space. Whether your setting is realistic, near-future, or delightfully fictional, the story is not “just for fun,” but rather a core anchor for facilitating learning. Moreover, when leveraged in experiential learning environments, narrative serves as critical glue, tying the learning itself to real life. Take, for example, a fictional story of a mystery investigator who is attempting to solve a complex puzzle…a carefully crafted story will help learners better grasp that while the story might be fake, the skills are very real and can apply/transfer to various aspects of their lives.

Common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

• Reskinning without redesign. If you simply wrap existing slides in a puzzle veneer, learners notice—and results won’t change. Start with outcomes; let them drive mechanics.
• Over-complexity. Balance challenge with achievability. It’s okay if the escape room is difficult, but the challenge should come from the learning, not from technical or superfluous hurdles. Test with real users and iterate.
• Wandering away from the purpose. If you get inspired by an element of the design (like the story), capture those ideas! Before you implement them, make sure to check them against your learning purpose. It’s easy to pursue cool ideas that may or may not be aligned.
  
  

Join us at OEB Global (and take it for a spin)

We believe educational escape room design is a learnable craft. If you’d like hands-on experience, join us for a three-hour pre-conference workshop at OEB Global this December. You’ll:

• Play through an educational escape room and debrief strategies with peers.
  
• Learn a practical design framework we use with clients.
  
• Prototype your own context-specific puzzle aligned to clear outcomes.
  
• Explore use cases from compliance to advanced technical training.
  
• Leave with free resources and next steps you can implement immediately.

It will be interactive (we promise, no three-hour lecture), purposeful, and, yes, fun.

Whether or not you can attend, our hope is that this blog encourages you to start experimenting. Educational escape rooms are not a fad; they’re a viable, long-term strategy for building capability through experience, with evidence you can see. If you’re budget-constrained, begin small with a single outcome, a single puzzle, and existing tech. If you’re ready to scale, consider building a modular series with a shared narrative and a capstone meta-puzzle. Either way, design with purpose and measure what matters.

Additional Free Resources

If you’re curious to compare notes or want a sounding board for your first build, we’d love to connect. While we do offer paid services (e.g. from consulting to custom builds, and more), we additionally have a bunch of free resources to support your design exploration, including:

• [Free] Your Escape Room Strategy Session: we’ll talk about design strategies for your specific situation – whether you’re building yourself or want to hire us. Email laura@pumpkinberryconsulting.com to schedule.
• Four demo puzzles, each designed with a different learning purpose, and other materials. (Sign up on our website and unsubscribe at any time.)

And if you end up using any of these ideas in your own work, tell us how it goes…we love seeing more learners unlock meaningful skills, one well-designed puzzle at a time.

Written for OEB 2025 by Laura Geringer & Madeline Shellgren, PumpkinBerry Consulting