It’s been quite a while… since my last blog post. I’m pre-occupied with writing for publication. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been working on designing digital escape rooms for my pharmacy students.
So it’d be great if I could get my work, and my students’ work out there. To be read by like-minded people, educators and researchers.
With the hope of contributing an idea, an improvement to the world. How infinitely miniscule the idea is… the hope, my hope that the seed grows, gains momentum and spreads through writing. And perhaps one day through educators’ training.
Anyway, it all started with a seed. I attended Chuah Kee Man’s online workshop on creating a virtual escape room. It was fun =)
Since I’ve been conducting training for lecturers on online courses, I thought the idea on digital escape rooms could be developed further by implementing it in pharmacy education.
Recreational escape rooms
A quick search on Google Map would reveal quite a number of recreational escape rooms in the Klang Valley, Penang and Johor Bahru. Entrance tickets could start from MYR30 upwards – a fun time-out with friends.
Or some may have heard about the movie, Escape room (2019). A psychological thriller about six people trying to find their way out of locked rooms. A cash prize awaits them if they manage to escape.
So what’s an escape room? It’s a team-based game where a team works together to solve a series of riddles and puzzles before they could escape a locked room. And they need to escape within a time frame.
A puzzle and a game can’t be too challenging, otherwise it’ll frustrate a player from playing it. Getting the right balance between challenges and “fun-ness” is key.
And I think what sets an escape room game apart from other forms of teaching strategies lies in a set of creative puzzles and immersive themes while keeping it fun and engaging.
The escape room themes are probably endless… it’s really up to your creativity, thus makes it unpredictable, mysterious and fun to students.
And that’s what I really like about escape room games.
My first attempt
Due to the popularity of escape rooms (especially with the younger generations), educators adapted it to classrooms and lectures to create a fun, gamified, active learning environment to students.
A recent review on the implementation of escape rooms in pharmacy education can be read here.
What are the benefits of conducting an online escape room?
Number one: students or participants can join from anywhere, provided the internet connectivity is strong. Number two: with a dash of creativity, it’s virtually free!
My first attempt in implementing a digital escape room was during my e-microlearning webinar at the Faculty of Pharmacy, UiTM in 2021. I used a Genially template of a plane crash survivor called Inka. He wanted to find his way out of the island of Amantani located at the Lake Titicaca.
If you’d like to quickly start one, a Genially template shared by Encik Shahriza Fadly, a librarian at Universiti Sains Malaysia, is quite useful. You can customised it to your classroom (using your Genially account).
Genially has hundreds of attractive templates to introduce gamification for in-person or hybrid or online classes. And it’s not too expensive for a 1-year subscription, if you wish to have access to more wonderful templates.*
I think a combination of Genially and Google Forms is “a match made in heavens” since they are free, user-friendly and quite stable.
Recent effort in digital escape rooms in pharmacy education
I do see more recent studies reporting on the implementation of online or digital escape rooms – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Late last year, I implemented a digital escape room with a Snow-white themed puzzle during the first-year students’ stereochemistry practical using multiple apps and platforms: Cisco Webex breakout room, MIRO Board, Quizizz and Google Forms.
The online practical was published by the ACS Journal of Chemical Education. The title of the article is ‘Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Escape a Remote Virtual Stereochemistry Lab Together’ to reflect the mirror image of stereoisomers in the lab activity.
And I’ve shared about my workspace from where I conducted the online practical (behind multiple screens).
More recently, the abstracts of our escape rooms work have been accepted at ICERI 2022 conference. The conference will be held in Seville, Spain on 7-9 November 2022.
The abstract titles are:
- Escape Passive Lectures: An Interactive, Multi-Themed Digital Escape Room On Medicinal Chemistry Topics
- Educational Escape Rooms: A Bibliometric Analysis
This first work will be relevant for a pharmacy educator who wish to turn a dry and dull lecture into an engaging online session. And the second one would be useful if you’d like to find out the research frontiers of educational escape rooms – to answer questions e.g. ‘What’s trending?’ and ‘What’s Next?’…
More details after the conference. For updates, check out my ResearchGate.
And Happy Malaysia Day!🇲🇾
* Disclaimer: I receive no payment to mention the apps. I’d recommend an app or platform because I’ve used it and found it’s great for my class/teaching purposes. And I hope it would be good for your class too.
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