Escape Rooms Inspire and Educate Undergraduate Students

Abstract Escape rooms have become wildly popular amongst the general public. In addition, physical and digital escape rooms have increased in popularity for educators, especially within healthcare education sectors. However, there is a noticeable gap in research regarding the use of educational escape rooms in other areas of higher education. For this study, we designed a physical educational escape room for an undergraduate sophomore-level Cell Biology course as part of a required laboratory component. Students completed a pre-quiz and post-quiz, and before and after student attitude surveys. The escape room was evaluated on a variety of parameters that connect to the following four pillars which were uncovered in our research: Engagement, Collaboration, Interdisciplinary Connections, and Logic. Most students agreed that the escape room increased their interest in cell biology in post survey evaluations. Students also responded that working as a team was supportive to their learning experience. The majority of students claimed to have an improved understanding of interdisciplinary connections in solving real-world problems and believed the escape room increased their learning experience. Most notably the mean quiz scores significantly increased (p = 0.0015) from 10.3 to 10.9 when comparing pre-quiz and post-quiz scores. This study addresses the need for research regarding the use of educational escape rooms and how they may improve student learning. The escape room utilized active learning, more specifically Game Based Learning (GBL) and Team Based Learning (TBL) theories. The results of this study support growing evidence that both learning theories enhance learning experiences and increase learning outcomes.