Analysing the effectiveness of digital escape rooms on enhancing student experience and knowledge acquisition – A microbiology-based case

Active and gamified teaching methods, such as digital escaperooms, effectively enhance student outcomes. However, current work in this areais highly specialised and lacks translational capability across sectors, withlimited data associated with key higher education impact measures. This studyaimed to design a central platform for developing digital escape rooms andevaluate their pedagogical impact using a microbiology-based example. A university-wide platform for the design and delivery ofdigital escape rooms and an exemplar microbiology-based room were developedutilising WordPress with specialist plugins. The study cohort was comprised of17 students from a range of biology, biomedicine and chemical scienceprogrammes. Quantitative surveys were then completed to understand how digitalescape rooms impacted key pedagogical metrics with further stratification basedon socioeconomic factors. Overall feedback was positive with students reporting apositive experience (100 %), the escape room was well developed (88.2 %),increased their knowledge (82.4 %) and added value to their degrees (70.6 %).These data show the positive pedagogical impacts of digital escape rooms inhigher education.