Two Pills Tips: Escape Rooms!

If you have worksheets, you can create an escape room!

Resources:

https://teacheveryday.com/escape-room-in-the-classroom/

https://www.edtechteam.com/blog/2017/08/break-out-of-classroom/

https://sites.google.com/site/digitalbreakouttemplate/home

Escape rooms are SO hot right now. I have seen diabetes escape rooms, gram positive infections escape rooms, and even interprofessional education escape rooms. They sound daunting and difficult to create. However, after making my first one, I can tell you-if you have worksheets, you can create an escape room!

Who: I piloted it in my elective, so a smaller group. Students were in teams of 2-3.

What: This was an end of course review for an infectious disease elective

Where: Classroom

When: End of course

Why:

-Allows you to review many concepts in a short amount of time

-Students are entirely immersed in the content as they attempt to solve the locks

-Timer naturally creates sense of urgency and competition

How:

-While tackle boxes & combination locks are probably more fun, using google forms is MUCH easier to modify

-I did not have much experience with google forms prior to this, but there are so many amazing resources on youtube that can help

-My google form ended up having 13 “locks”

-I liked having the ability to give them notes such as “must capitalize”

-Was able to send students shortened link to escape room

-Was nervous that somehow it would show all of the answers, (in the same way I get nervous about electronic exams), but it all worked out great

-I gave the students 90 minutes to complete the escape room and they all did-though with only a few minutes remaining

-Some glitches-be sure to only require questions that are actually locks

-I had a crossword puzzle as a required element of the escape room, but accidentally “required’ an answer-the students were unable to submit that one

-For the questions, I used a canva presentation. I’m sure you could put everything successfully into a google form, but again, Canva is easier for me to modify. (I’m more familiar with it).

Some examples I used:

-Name 5 antibiotics that provide activity against Pseudomonas. I would then choose a letter from each antibiotic and it would spell a word. The students would have to enter a word as the code.

-I would have students answer multiple choice questions about antibiotics. Each multiple choice response correlated with a number (a=1, b-2, etc). After answering 10 questions, students would have to enter their total score into the google form. This was tricky as they were not entirely sure which questions were incorrect.

-I required students to role play and counsel each other on certain ID concepts as if they were working in the community setting. They would then be responsible for writing a few sentences as a short answer response. They didn’t know that the google form would accept anything, so it worked out well.

-I created a crossword for questions that were not easily converted to codes. Crosswords are great in that they are self-correcting. The code to enter into the google form was something I determined after they completed the crossword (I would tell them when it was complete that the code word was the answer to 3 down). I told them afterwards so that they would complete the entire puzzle.

It took some time to make, but was SO much fun. I would absolutely do this activity again.

Try it out! Play with Youtube over winter break and see if you can create an escape room for spring semester!