Abstract:

The paper presents an educational escape room (EER) designed within the course ‘Introduction to Linguistics Studies’ for the first-year students of new Media Language, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU). The authors participated in a massive online open course for educators of higher education institutions on how to design and implement EERs, developed by the EU project ‘UNLOCK - Creativity through game-based learning at higher education’ and afterwards tried to implement what they learned by designing an EER for their students. The aim of the paper is to discuss the application of EER within the discipline of Linguistics and its implications for student motivation and learning experience. In this paper, we present an EER that was developed as a physical EER, but it was not exactly "a locked room". Instead, it was arranged at the premises of the new library at Kaunas University of Technology and students had to solve the puzzles by exploring the open learning area of the library.

The aim was two-fold:
(1) to motivate 1st year students attending the course "Introduction to Linguistics Studies" view the subject of Linguistics in a more playful light and become more interested learners;
(2) to provide an opportunity to familiarize with the new library in a different and more involving way.

Keywords:

Educational escape rooms, innovative teaching.