An escape room is a game in which a group of players work together as a team to uncover clues and solve puzzles in one or more physical rooms with the purpose of reaching a specific goal. They have a limited amount of time to work through different tasks.
A digital escape room is by and large the same, but the rooms are not physical. They are digital or more accurately digital texts.
Digital escape rooms can be a great pedagogical tool to create variety in your teaching practices. We often talk about varying assessment practices, but in my experience most learners want teachers to create variation in how different subjects are taught as well.
I learnt about this concept when I attended a seminar hosted by Bro AOF which was taught by Eric Torsøe.
Fagfornyelsen or the new curriculum is based on certain policy documents and research that led to the conclusion that future learners need certain skills for success. Of these Critical thinking · Creativity · Collaboration · Communication are called the four C's of the 21st century.
Digital Escape Rooms is a pedagogical tool which can help stimulate and hone these four C's.
The idea is that learners will learn/read/ work with different texts but in order to get access to the text they need to solve a puzzle to get a password. They use this password to open the next text/room and so on. They have to be creative, think critically, collaborate and communicate with each other to navigate their way through different rooms.
In order to create a digital escape room you need to able to lock a pdf file. Click here to learn how to protect a file using a password.
In this powerpoint you will find a lesson plan using the concept of digital escape rooms. I have created 4 documents which the learners use as digital rooms. Room 5 is a quizlet, and room 0 is a short text in the textbook book Citizens. We used 45 min x 2 in two different groups of vocational learners and we had enough time.
Here are the different documents that the learners will open using passwords. You will find the passwords on the last slide of the above powerpoint, and clues to figure out the password are also in the powerpoint.
Tips to create passwords:
1. The passwords shouldn't be too complicated.
2. You can use passwords that lead to interdisciplinary work - for example ask the mathematics teacher what the class has been working with and the password can be a mathematics task that the learners have to solve.
3. Make the learners create their own digital rooms.
4. The password can be revealed a short video that you have uploaded somewhere. If you are comfortable doing that, you can record a video of yourself teaching a certain theme and hide the password in the video.
Good luck :-)
