Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 45

Method
An advantage (?) of the traditional library induction
is that it is an effective way to impart knowledge to
hundreds of students in a lecture environment. This
involves delivering a subject specific presentation
and demonstration of the library service and
relevant resources in under an hour. However,
delivering an induction that is an immersive
experience requires planning and flexibility within
the academic timetable. The inductions would
take place over four weeks covering 96 students,
though timetabling sessions proved a significant
limitation to my planning with clashes limiting each
session to an hour. A typical escape room is 60
minutes – though a blog post by Room Escape
Artist (2017) suggests puzzle design should define
timing. This being an educational experience rather
than a commercial, paid for escape room, I wanted
to run sessions for two hours to include a briefing,
an ice breaker activity to encourage and develop
teamwork – a key part of completing the challenge
– and 75 minutes for the activity with time for
debriefing and reset for the next groups. I would
now have to cater for four groups of seven students
per session in order to cover 96 in three weeks due
to my own timetabling clashes (the day job still goes
on). This presented my first significant challenge.
Seven students per group would be too many and
four groups in the room at one time would mean
I could not use the safes to advance the activity,
as they would be working simultaneously. I would
have to develop four different routes to avoid
groups running off with each other’s clues and, to
avoid groups spoiling things for the subsequent
groups, four different routes each week!
The activity would take in all areas of the Library
not just forensic science texts and involved finding
items on the shelves, requiring use of the library
catalogue and the Library of Congress classification
scheme; finding and accessing electronic journal
articles to find information from the full text; and
accessing the reading list system.
To avoid creating multiple paths per session, I
provided four ways to open a safe with solving the
mystery just one. Others would be found from
clues, which would need to be solved in order to
understand the combination and safe it referred to.
Three safes could be opened without completing
the main activity, which would still count as a
success.
Results
No team managed to complete the challenge
in the time provided, but the feedback received
during debrief was overwhelmingly positive with
comments about the activity being: “more engaging
than a lecture”; “an engaging and creative way
to use the library”; “frustrating, but in a way that
challenged the mind”. One student commented:
“I thought you were just going to talk at us for an
hour, so it was nice to get out and about”.
Some students indicated the activity was too hard
and they did not know where to begin and many
commented that they wanted more time, which I
agreed with. Progression was dependent on finding
items like batteries for the black lights as this
provided hidden information. These could be found
from deciphering the letter provided. I deliberately
created a multiple puzzle path, which is the most
commonly used form of puzzle organisation for
escape rooms as discussed in Nicholson’s white
paper on commercial escape rooms (see Fig I
below). I chose this because, with multiple groups
working at the same time, it was important they
could work independently. This resulted in not
having to create multiple versions for each session,
which worked surprisingly well, though I am
disappointed not to make more use of the safes to
advance the activity as many escape rooms have
you unlocking things to find more clues or puzzles.
A RTICL E # 2
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