Chapter 10 – Playful practicals: breaking free from educational norms with online escape rooms

Abstract

Recreational escape rooms are becoming increasingly popular as social immersive experiences (Veldkamp et al., 2020). Escape rooms challenge players to work together in order to solve puzzles and complete tasks to ‘escape the room’ within a specific time. Play is well known to improve cognitive development in both children and adults (Piaget, 1962; Vygotsky, 1962) and gamification fosters the relationship between fun, focus and learning outcomes (Tulloch, 2014; van Gaalen et al., 2021). Escape rooms therefore offer a fun and novel way of developing interpersonal skills and effective team working and universities have begun to apply this approach across multiple disciplines. This chapter shares our experience of designing and delivering online escape rooms to develop practical skills in healthcare education and considers further playful applications across Higher Education.