The Importance of Learning Content
This is intended to be Part 2 of a 6-part series.
When it comes to educational escape rooms, the learning is paramount. That’s because for an educational escape room, the focus is on the educational portion – which means that they must come away with having gained knowledge, skills, or abilities from the session.
It is a game. But dare I say it, the game comes second. The game must support the learning, not vice versa. Learning cannot be an afterthought in an escape room lesson.
This is an important point that my mentor imparted to me about educational escape rooms.
But there’s a way to convert your learning content into a format that’s suitable for escape room lessons, so that when you build it, it all comes together more easily.
What are Escape Room Lessons?
I’ll use the terms educational escape rooms and escape room lessons interchangeably.
An escape room is a live-action, team-based game where players solve puzzles under time pressure to achieve a goal (Nicholson, 2018).
There are also copious benefits to educational escape rooms, which I’ve written about previously.
Basically they are extended learning games that make up the entire lesson or session. It’s facilitated by you (or the trainer), so it’s an experiential session. They’re meant to make learning sticky through fun.
Components of an Educational Escape Room
There are four major components to an educational escape room. In order, you should think about:
1. Learning Content: This is what the learners will learn. This is the pedagogical part.
2. Story: This is the premise or scenario of the escape room. This is the fantastical part.
3. Gameplay Sequence: This is the order in which the learners will learn the content. This is the structural part.
5. Puzzle Units: These are the individual puzzles that the learners must solve – it is what the learning content may be transformed into. This is the fun part.
They are listed in the order of importance. I personally like to start with Story, but if it’s your first escape room lesson then starting with Learning Content may be more helpful.
This article will go into Learning Content.
What is Learning Content?
If you have a worksheet, handouts, or learning materials – congratulations! You already have learning content.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have to shape it to something that’s easier to implement for an educational escape room, though.
Your learning content is dependent on your learning outcomes – what you want the learners to take away from the session. Most of the time, one learning outcome is tied to one environment (or room/stage) in the educational escape room. Environments (rooms/stages) are the different components of the gameplay sequence, which I will cover in a later post.
For example, an educational escape room about emotion fairies who are lost may have several different islands, which each represent an emotion. Each island is an environment. An escape room lesson about receiving a dilapidated house which needs to be restored, may have each room teaching a different communication skill. Each room is an environment.
Therefore, the number of learning outcomes you have are tied to the number of environments (rooms/stages) that you have to build in your gameplay sequence.
The learning content itself is the material that the learners will encounter in the course of playing through the escape room lesson. You can, in a pinch, copy and paste the materials from your worksheets/handouts directly into the educational escape room (I’ve done that before) because they are the “games” that your learners will have to figure out.
But of course, escape room lessons work better with some types of content.
Content That Works Better with Escape Room Lessons
Content that can be divided and shaped into discrete units of information work better with educational escape rooms. Understandably, topics like Mathematics lend themselves very easily to being adapted into an escape room lesson.
Most topics that have separate learning points (eg. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) can be easily converted into escape room lessons as well.
The rule of thumb is – if you would test the topic using close-ended questions or multiple-choice questions (MCQs), then it works better for an educational escape room.
When it comes to language lessons, where the output is a written piece of text – it’s not as easy. However, it is possible to do so only if the final part of your escape room relies on an open-ended answer/presentation, while the earlier parts rely on close-ended questions or MCQs.
My first escape rooms were English language ones, so while I may say that language lessons take more work to convert into escape room lessons…. I did so anyway.
Dividing Your Learning Content
If you already have a worksheet/handout, then the content may have already been divided for you.
Remember how each learning outcome is a tied to an environment? In educational escape rooms, environments are made up of puzzles. Each puzzle is basically a question, or a series of questions, in your worksheet/handout.
Again, it’s better if those questions are close-ended, multiple choice types of questions. Reflection-type or open-ended questions are not recommended, especially if it’s your first escape room lesson – but they can be implemented, as I’ll share in the Puzzle section.
Once you’ve divided your learning content into the different environments (learning outcomes) and the questions that will fall under those environments. You’re good to go.
How I Divided My Learning Content
I’ll use some lessons from my English language educational escape rooms as an example.
For an English lesson on vocabulary for emotions, I separated all the questions into the different emotions. My learning outcomes were for students to increase their vocabulary for the different emotions – happiness, sadness, anger, and so on.
Each emotion then became an environment. The various questions and notes about words to describe that emotion became the puzzles.
For another English lesson about writing dialogue, I created different scenarios in which dialogue can be written (an argument, an apology, showing gratitude, and so on). My learning outcomes were for the students to know how to write appropriate dialogue for each of the different scenarios.
Each scenario then became an environment. The techniques for writing dialogue and the sentence stems/fragments all became the puzzles.
For a corporate session about communication skills, we created three different categories of communication skills. These each became an environment.
The different objectives, techniques, and workflows for communication skills then became the puzzles within each environment.
As you can see – diverse types of learning content can be converted into an educational escape room.
Tips for Preparing Your Learning Content
Ready to turn one of your lessons into an escape room lesson? If you have existing content, here’s what you can do.
1. Divide the materials equally into different learning outcomes. Remember that each learning outcome will be equivalent to one environment (room/stage). You roughly want each environment to last for the same amount of time, so divide it that way.
2. Create close-ended questions for each material. Close-ended questions are basically MCQs – although they can be matching activities, gap-fill/cloze activities (with helping words), sorting activities, and so on. If you have an open-ended activity, move it to the last environment, or you can make it close-ended by providing pre-determined answers that learners can choose. They will become your puzzles.
3. Decide the priority of each question. It is likely that you’ll have too much content to cover. Determine which questions are compulsory and which questions are optional. There is a place to put the optional questions, but knowing which ones must go into your educational escape room is helpful when you got to the Puzzles phase later.
Escape Room Lessons Are As Varied As Learning Content
Many different topics can be converted into educational escape rooms. It’s not about the story or creativity. Rather, it’s about how well you can divided and prepare it for this purpose.
This sort of thinking actually requires your logical brain more than your creative brain, so you may be surprised how easily it comes to certain people.
Remember at the end of the day that if you’re a learning designer, you can already create an escape room lesson. It’s just another form of curriculum development, after all.
And if you need help, you know who to ping.
How To Create an Escape Room Lesson series
- How To Create an Escape Room Lesson Part 1: The Components of an Educational Escape Room
- Educational Escape Rooms: Using Play To Boost Learning
References
Nicholson, S. (2018). Creating engaging escape rooms for the classroom. Childhood Education 94(1). 44-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2018.1420363
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