Flipping the Script

When Virginia Tech shifted to online teaching during the Spring 2020 semester, biology instructor Meg Emori found herself in a situation that would become familiar for the university’s students and faculty.

After traveling home, the 240 students in Emori’s Principles of Biology class were spread across 11 time zones, from California to the United Arab Emirates. Seemingly overnight, there was no one place or time to reach them. And as the weeks passed, she could see the effect time spent online was having on her students.

“By the end of the semester, I knew my students were burned out and barely keeping their heads above water,” said Emori. “How could I keep their attention to review for their final?”

Her response was both creative and unexpected; build a digital escape room that would guide students through the coursework.

“I’d read journal articles about using escape rooms as a teaching tool, plus ‘gamification’ was a big trend when I started at Virginia Tech,” said Emori. “I wanted to experiment with the idea.”

Escape rooms, often used for entertainment or team building, involve working against the clock to solve puzzles and find clues that help participants “unlock” the exit. Emori wondered if one could be created online as an engaging way for her students to review for their final exam. When travel restrictions stranded her parents in Blacksburg, providing help with child care and meals, she had time to develop her idea.

Rather than focusing on single subjects, Emori wanted the experience to be a first-person, guided trip across a landscape mixing questions about cultures, ecosystems, and plant and animal biology. Plus, it needed to reflect the current social justice movements.

“I’ve been involved in diversity work on campus for several years and this was all happening during the George Floyd protests, which were forcing all of us to consider some of the systemic problems in our country,” said Emori. “It was eye-opening to realize some of my own biases when I put together this information.”

Too often scientific discovery is depicted as happening in North America or Europe and the rest of the world is “exotic” and awaiting discovery, Emori thought. She wanted to “flip the script” and tell the story of the unique adaptations and innovations in a range of cultures and places.

For example, one slide or “escape room,” was set in the Andes Mountains and asked questions about the 500-year-old Inca roads and how the empire’s descendants have a unique adaptation for pulling oxygen from their hemoglobin which allows them to live at high elevations without getting altitude sickness. Other questions addressed the shrinking Pastoruri Glacier and sexual dimorphism in Peru’s national bird.

The end product - nine “rooms” with about 150 questions - was created using PowerPoint and Canvas and fit neatly into Pathways principles of integration, inclusivity, and relevance. If biology was the entry point, as students answered all the questions and “escaped” to the next “room,” they would see the interconnectedness of science, culture, history, and geography. Complete all of them and they received 10 points of extra credit towards their final grade.

After the semester, 65 percent of the 185 students who responded to the survey said the review materials were “fun, engaging, and would like to see more of this format.” Based on that success, Emori used the digital escape room this spring and plans to continue in the future.

“I haven’t done research since getting my Ph.D. but I really enjoyed getting to investigate and immerse myself in research and journals again,” said Emori. “It was a chance to let myself play, I felt like I took a mini-sabbatical to get a global perspective on these topics.”

“For anyone interested in building a digital escape room for their students, I’d recommend starting small and thinking globally,” she added. “And don’t be intimidated by the technology, with a little flexibility and creativity, you can overcome those barriers.”