Active and gamified teaching methods have received significant interest within higher education over the past decade, with an increased push from higher education institutions to more actively engage students with their education. One example of active learning that has gained popularity is the use of escape rooms within higher education. Escape rooms are typically puzzle-based games where participants must complete a series of puzzles to “escape” from a location before time expires (Taraldsen et al., 2022). In recent years, a transition to “digital” computerised escape rooms has allowed participants a similar experience with significantly less academic time and resources to deliver compared to in-person modalities. Escape rooms have been shown to increase students’ problem-solving, leadership skills, listening, conflict negotiations, and verbal communication, all of which are valuable traits for students to acquire during their studies (Veldkamp et al., 2020).
In physiology, the ability to analyse and interpret data is of high value and is commonly an intended learning outcome of physiology modules/units. However, many students possess limited experience in key analytical skills, which leaves them unprepared to do this within a laboratory setting or employment. Therefore, this project aimed to design and develop a digital escape room to allow students to develop these analytical skills and assess its impact on student experience.
The digital escape room was created using the University of Salford’s universal digital escape room platform “UoScape” (Morgan & Jones, in press). The escape room was built using the WordPress virtual reality Pro plugin and 360° images of laboratory environments. Puzzles within the escape room were designed using H5P and Passster WordPress plugins. Students perceived data analysis skills and experience with completing the digital escape room were evaluated using previously described pedagogical surveys (Hussain et al. 2023) comprising either open-answer questions or based on a 5-point Likert scale. This study was approved by the University of Salford's ethical review board (Ethics ID: 14273).
A total of 104 second-year undergraduate students completed the evaluation survey. Most students reported an enhancement of their knowledge of physiological data analysis (74.0%). Over two-thirds of students (67.3%) reported a positive experience completing the digital escape room, with 11.5% reporting a negative opinion. Students described positive experiences with conducting gamified learning (74.0%), that it would support their education (71.2%) and that digital escape rooms enhanced the value of their degree (68.3%). Students (76.0%) stated that engagement with the digital escape room would help with their upcoming assessments. Individual puzzle analysis identified that students reported that puzzles which involved mathematical elements were more challenging than image analysis puzzles (73.3% vs 51.8%). When student responses were stratified based on socioeconomic factors and higher education entry qualifications, we observed no significant difference between group responses, highlighting the equity of the digital escape room.
These data show the pedagogical benefits of digital escape rooms to enhance students’ knowledge of handling physiological data, student experience and degree value. This further highlights the benefits of active gamified teaching methods for the teaching of physiological concepts within higher education.
