Escaping the Laboratory: An Escape Room to Reinforce Biomedical Engineering Skills.

Abstract

Commercial escape rooms have grown in popularity as an enjoyable experience that also doubles as an exercise in communication and collaboration. Educators can take advantage of these natural qualities to engage and support students in a low-stress learning environment. The primary goal of this study is to share the development and application of an educational escape room as a tool to provide biomedical engineering (BME) students with an immersive and practical experience. A BME laboratory course-specific escape room was developed and beta-tested on an initial group of BME students. The first set of feedback enabled improvements to the design and difficulty of the escape room, which was followed by the final release of the activity for the intended undergraduate BME course. Across an academic year, 74 participants agreed to provide survey feedback for this study. Despite a moderate escape rate (29%), students reported high satisfaction and enthusiasm for the activity. Student survey responses indicated that participants were engaged and empowered to successfully escape even without external motivators. Responses supported the effectiveness of the escape room as a BME learning environment, allowing students to practice and retain course-related knowledge in a challenging but low-risk activity. The foundational structure of escape rooms offers a beneficial environment for experiential knowledge application. We conclude that educational escape rooms show promise as a pedagogical tool in promoting enhanced knowledge retention through immersive, game-based learning.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43683-022-00089-w.