Abstract:

Higher Education has changed a lot in the last decades. The new student-centered paradigm has led to more inclusive teaching methodologies, addressing the diversity in the student population, moving to the so-called active learning [1]. Learning process must be high-quality and effective. In this context, game-based learning has revealed as one of the most interesting strategies in Higher Education achieving both goals with great motivation and commitment among students [2].

An Escape Room is a game-based-learning team activity where a reduced group of people is locked together in a scenario and given a series of riddles that they have to solve in order to escape in a limited time. Looks simple, not trivial though! This kind of activity needs careful preparation from the teacher's side regarding the academic point of view. The contents addressed in the riddles have to be adapted both to the previous knowledge of the students enrolled in the course and to the new knowledge that wants to be fixed. Furthermore, the proposed riddles have to be hard enough to challenge the students and promote critical thinking but not enough to prevent them to solve it; otherwise, the opposite effect would be achieved. Besides their knowledge, a variety of different competencies is required to successfully accomplish an escape room activity. For example, team members should be able to communicate and rely on each other abilities in order to solve the proposed riddles and progress through the adventure [3].

In our particular case, we have designed an escape room lab activity for the Pharmacy graduate students enrolled in the Inorganic Chemistry course. This learning tool is planned at the end of the semester, thus working as a final and integrated summary of all theoretical and practical contents of the subject, which students tend to forget as the semester progresses. In the activity, the students play the role of famous scientists who have been kidnapped and locked in a secret facility of a despicable dictatorship. To reach their freedom they use their chemical knowledge to solve chemical problems and uncover hidden messages which will guide them to their freedom while time is running out.

Acknowledgments:
Financial support from the Innovative Teaching Project PID18-483 (University of Granada) is acknowledged. We would also like to thank all the students who ‘dared’ to enroll in this English course and actively participated in this initiative.

References:
[1] J. Biggs, C. Tang, J. Kirby, Teaching for Quality Learning at University (4th ed), 2011, USA, New York
[2] P. Buckley, E. Doyle, Interactive Learning Environments 24 (6), 2016, 1162-1175
[3] M.J. Vergne, J.D. Simmons, R.S. Bowen, J. Chem. Educ. 96 (5), 2019, 985-991

Keywords:

Escape room, student motivation, chemistry, fixing knowledge.