Pre-Conference Workshop A6
Serious Gaming: Designing an Educational Escape Room
Date Wednesday, Nov 27 Time – Room Schöneberg Price: 90.00 € Status: places available
Jasper van Winden
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Hi everyone, I work Utrecht University as a teacher and project manager for educational innovation. I have a keen interest for learning spaces, blended learning en faculty development.
All three of these themes, combined with my personal love for games and play, led to the project 'Escaping the chasm' in which an escape room was developed for teachers to experience a diverse palette of edcuational technology. Aim of the project was to especially find a way to connect with the hard-to-reach target group of teachers belonging to the early and late majority ( in the innovation curve of Rogers). When an innovation manages to get adopted by these groups of teachers it is said to have 'crossed the chasm', hence the name of the project.
Developing an escape room has been a very insightful process and definitely the most fun project I have worked on so far. I hope to offer the same experience to all participants of our workshop at the preconference.
Emma Bosman
Educational consultant & designer, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
After studying Educational Sciences at Utrecht University and being interested in how to innovate education and use serious games in education, I started working as an Educational consultant and designer at Educate-it; the University-wide programme of Utrecht University which helps teachers to enhance and future-proof their courses with blended learning methods and IT tools.
In the project 'Escaping the Chasm' I was one of the core designers of the escaperoom and now that the design is finished I am coordinating the Escape Room and our 'gamemasters' to keep the escaperoom running so our teachers can play it. With these activities, I hope to inspire teachers with new and different learning methods that can strenghten their education.
Discover
Like many other institutions, Utrecht University strives to transform its education towards more active and blended learning. Some teachers adapt their teaching easily to new opportunities that technology has to offer. However, it proves to be difficult to gain buy-in from the majority of teachers to apply these new teaching methods.
In this half-day Workshop, the facilitators will introduce a novel approach that makes it possible for this hard-to-reach target group to experience and reflect on digital teaching tools. The goal is to support them in making informed decisions on tool use in their own teaching.
The project “Escaping the Chasm” strives to broaden teachers’ views on the technological opportunities for education by designing a fun, collaborative activity, inspired by escape rooms. During the project, an actual pop-up Escape Room was created, taking specific needs and conditions for teachers and the educational goal into account.
If you would like go with fellow participants on an escape room adventure before this Workshop starts: sign up for it separately in the registration form!
In the first part of the Workshop, information will be provided about the design, set-up, development, and implementation of the Escape Room for teachers; experience and lessons learned from experience will also be shared. In the second part, a “Game Jam” will be created in which teams of participants will design their own Escape Room experience.
Agenda
- Introduction
- Project “Escaping The Chasm”
- Which “Chasm”?
- The design idea and educational goals
- Short introduction to Escape Rooms
- The Design process and challenges
- Stepping into the “magic circle” (the arrival)
- In-Game, monitoring with Game Masters
- The debriefing with an educational consultant
- Expectations - time and people
- Game Jam
- How to design the story and setting
- How to choose digital educational tools as puzzle base
- How to design a puzzle
- Presenting design to each other
- Conclusion
Outcomes
Participants will learn about the basic design principles of designing an educational Escape Room (or serious game). Their main takeaways will be:
- How to use serious games to connect with the hard-to-reach target group of teachers for technology acceptance in education
- What should you expect designing an Escape Room?
- Hands-on experience with designing the first basics for an Escape Room
You will go home with a basic concept of an escape room to implement in your own organisation.
Who will benefit most?
Anyone with the need to acquaint their (autonomous) colleagues or employees with the opportunities that technology has to offer for their profession.
The facilitators’ own project has a focus on higher education and is specifically interesting for educational designers and technologists; faculty-development professionals; and directors of education and teachers. However, the conceptual design and experiences are relevant for other branches as well.