Search results

Escape room-based learning is a new educational game-based learning trend which embeds student learning within an exciting escape room scenario. Ordinarily these educational escape rooms are in a table-top format which involves learners decoding clues together around a table. In the age of a global pandemic [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] with stringent social distancing and lock-downs, this normal game modality was not possible and so an alternate online approach was required. Thus, this paper aims to study escape room activities during global pandemics.

In this paper, the authors outline how these escape room activities have been taken online, in an synchronous virtual environment and evaluate the student perception of these escape rooms, in contrast to previous cohorts of students who completed escape rooms together in person.

The authors' results indicate that although students enjoy the escape room game-based learning environment, the remote nature of the activity means the students take longer to solve the puzzles. The students are also more likely to struggle in the activity and find them less engaging than the in-person escape room challenges.

Although educational escape rooms have been devised for a variety of subjects and can be run through several different modalities (table-top, full rooms and online), this study compares different modalities (online vs table-top) for identical puzzles taken over different cohorts of students.

This study examined escape rooms as a teaching strategy for developing four leadership competencies associated with communication. The results indicate that escape rooms are an effective teaching strategy for communication competency development in leadership education. One hundred and five participants engaged in an escape room experience followed by a discussion focused on the competencies. The findings indicated a significant positive change from pre-test to post-test in all four student leadership competencies measured, including verbal communication, listening, advocating for a point of view, and conflict negotiation. Leadership educators should consider escape rooms as a pedagogical tool for competency development and may wish to explore alternative serious games to align with their learning objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically and empirically explore tourist experiences with the niche-like, yet global phenomenon of escape room attractions.

An exploratory empirical study of visitors’ experiences with selected top-rated escape rooms in the USA and Europe was carried out by means of netnographic research and automated content analysis.

The results show that this attraction provides new, peak, unique and fun experiences through the challenging activities and social component of the game play. The findings provide an insight into both the authenticity of experiences with novel attractions and the group aspects of fun and flow concepts.

The findings are restricted to online reviews on the TripAdvisor website and are possibly biased because of the use of a non-random sample.

Theoretical implications are discussed and explicated as future research questions. They are relevant for the conceptual development, research and management of playful experiences within urban and special interest tourism. Societal implications are also addressed.

This paper is a preliminary in-depth examination of the escape room phenomenon from the customer experience standpoint. It is of relevance for the conceptualisation and improvement of tourist experiences with new and fun attractions.

This paper theoretically and empirically aims to explore customer group flow experiences with an urban adventure game called “escape rooms”.

A comprehensive model of group flow antecedents and consequences is proposed and empirically verified by means of survey research and SEM methodology.

The results indicate that key determinants of group flow experiences are the collective challenge/skills balance, and theming and storytelling. Group flow, in turn, significantly affects participants’ revisit intentions and word-of-mouth communications, as well as group cohesion and subjective quality of life.

The supported research model provides an insight into how group flow experiences can be facilitated by means of gamification and yields important managerial implications. These are systematically discussed in regard to antecedent and consequence constructs.

This paper is one of the first papers to systematically examine the antecedents and consequences of group flow experiences at adventure game-based attractions. It contributes to the understanding and management of peak experiences in contemporary hospitality and tourism.

COVID-19, by all accounts, forced higher education to shift to distance delivery. As a result, faculty attempted to innovate and integrate new teaching methods as courses moved online. We utilized an online, virtual reality game to teach team decision-making as a function of leadership. In teams, learners worked cooperatively, making decisions and solving progressive parts of a mystery to advance through an escape room activity. Following the activity, learners independently completed a structured written reflection designed to guide them through the experiential learning cycle. Additionally, learners’ perceptions of the learning activity were measured using a short quantitative survey. Results were mixed, with learners indicating that the activity was engaging, but also suggesting that their team could have worked better in a less virtual immersive experience. Learners’ written reflections indicated they successfully applied their knowledge of decision-making during the activity, along with other teamwork and leadership competencies. Recommendations include providing more time to complete the escape room game and incorporating more robust team debriefing to support reflection and learning transference. Virtual reality may provide effective leadership learning experiences, particularly for groups of learners who are geographically dispersed or participating in online education.

House fire risk would be minimised if fire safety principles were incorporated at the design stage. This issue is rarely addressed in the literature. The purpose of this study is to propose a multi-criteria decision-making framework to evaluate fire risk of detached house designs in the United Arab Emirates and countries of similar cultural background.

The framework was developed based on function areas where (detached) house fires start, expert opinion and recommendations derived from the published literature on residential fire safety. This framework was applied to a sample of ten public detached house designs to check the applicability of the framework and to determine how safe these designs are from a fire safety perspective.

The proposed framework is proven to be an effective preliminary fire risk evaluation tool of detached house designs, and more research is needed in this area.

The proposed framework is an encouraging first step in incorporating fire risk minimisation at the design stage of detached houses based on determining the preferred location of function areas but requires further development and validation, especially in other design settings.

The proposed framework is an initial endeavour in helping designers of detached houses to minimise fire risk and its potential effects on residents.

This research proposes a way to minimise fire risk at the design stage of detached houses.

This paper aims to outline the conceptualization, design and implementation process of an escape room-style game for first-year student orientation sessions hosted by a combined academic unit including a university library, archives and museum. The game can be customized and adapted for a variety of learning environments and purposes.

Breakout EDU kits have been used to create escape room-style games to teach curricular content in new and engaging ways. This orientation session was designed to teach new students how to find and use essential collections and resources on each of the unit’s websites by using a fun, collaborative and engaging game.

According to post-orientation survey responses, an average of nearly 80% of all new students felt that the Breakout EDU orientation game was either “Moderately Effective” or “Very Effective” in preparing them for their first day of classes. Documented observational assessments further suggest that students had fun playing the game and appreciated the hands-on approach to library orientation.

Although the use of both digital and non-digital games in library orientations are heavily documented, there has been very little research conducted on the use of escape rooms in this context, and almost no research has been conducted on the use of Breakout EDU kits for library orientations. This paper provides a practical example of how academic libraries can incorporate a customizable and highly engaging escape room-style game into first-year orientation sessions of nearly all sizes.

Contributes towards the research into the potential dangers of unprotected hotel rooms by highlighting the incidence, and cause, of some major hotel fires in Asia and USA. Additionally, through the use of fire modelling computer software, predicts various fire scenarios inside the guest room, demonstrates how little time is available for evacuation, and states that without specific precautions, fire fatalities will continue to occur. Suggests that once such an appreciation becomes widespread, together with the worldwide publicity resulting from fires in hospitality environments, this may influence the demands made by travellers, and that hoteliers might be well advised to exceed the requirements placed upon them by statute, and advertise such personal safety guarantees alongside their usual facilities, as part of an overall strategy in the battle for competitive edge.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has long been a regular feature in professions outside K-12 education and is growing in social studies education in recent years. PBL is built around student inquiry into an “ill-structured” or “messy” problem (Wieseman and Cadwell, 2005, p. 11). These inquiries are open ended, largely autonomous and student driven (Savin-Baden, 2014). The collaborative nature of PBL scenarios allows students to work with real-world concepts and skills to solve problems (Ferreira and Trudel, 2012). This paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper describes an innovative strategy for PBL learning, an Escape the Room (ETR) activity centered on historical content knowledge – in this case, the First World War. The activity incorporates a series of ill-structured problems with the First World War as its historical context.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the utility of PBL activities like “ETR” and possible applications in the classroom for teachers.

There has been significant research in PBL activities but little in the specific application of “ETR” scenarios, a rising trend in commercially available activities. The potential for student inquiry and engagement is a rich field for social studies educators.

Explains why the safety measures in England and Ireland have been unsuitable for application to historic buildings and points out that the protection of property has rarely been considered. Details how inflexible the fire safety legislation and regulations have been. The conflict between officers dealing with planning conservation and building control officers led to a review of regulations. Outlines these reviews, and the flexibility and changes which were brought about with the introduction of the new 1991 Building Regulations. Discusses the new approach to fire safety in historic buildings and the results it has achieved, for example, recognition of smoke damage and detection systems.