Escaping Social Injustices: Changemaking Escape Rooms for Human Rights in the Literature Classroom

Escape rooms have been used in STEM classrooms, but there is little evidence of successful implementation of escape rooms in humanities courses in higher learning. This paper examines the experience of adapting escape rooms for the education setting in literature. To do so, two new components in the learning process were incorporated: (a) students are required to create their own escape rooms, thus increasing the stakes and the level of ownership; they are not only responsible for their own learning, but they also need to teach others; and, (b) students are required to explore a human rights violation or social injustices in their escape rooms, making civic engagement an end goal of the project. Participants in their escape room come out of the experience learning something about social change and being called to action.