STEM escape rooms for public engagement

Amanda Mathieson,Edward Duca

doi:10.14324/rfa.05.2.10

Abstract

Escape rooms are a relatively new cultural phenomenon, attracting a wide range of audiences to test their puzzle-solving skills. While this format has been trialled in an educational context, there has been little exploration of it as a tool for engagement. We ran a STEM-based escape room, open to the public, over five days at a science centre in Malta. This was an exploratory exercise to determine whether escape rooms could be successful in an informal science engagement context. Over seventy players attempted the game and completed our evaluation. Our results suggest that escape rooms can be used in engagement contexts as they provide a positive experience that encourages future interactions with science. They may also draw audiences not normally interested in science and help them engage with scientific content in a more accessible manner. Interestingly, players were able to persist in engaging with content they found difficult while still finding it enjoyable, which has implications for the science communication of complex topics. Finally, players perceived that they were able to learn science through the escape room, which may increase their self-efficacy.

Highlights

Science education and public engagement with science and technology (PEST) can be treated as separate activities with differing goals, but there is much overlap in the challenges faced by both
All expressed some interest in going to a similar event. This high participation rate may suggest that the escape room format helps broaden the field in a way that allows those with less science capital to engage
This case study suggests that they retain many of their benefits in an engagement context and that they can be used successfully as an engagement tool by targeting PEST-specific aims

Summary

Introduction

Science education and public engagement with science and technology (PEST) can be treated as separate activities with differing goals, but there is much overlap in the challenges faced by both. One mutual challenge is how to arouse interest in science among those who are uninterested or disengaged. Educators continually turn to innovative methods to engage their students and, as such, several have begun to develop educational escape rooms for this purpose (Veldkamp et al, 2020). Escape rooms are themed rooms in which players are locked inside for a specific amount of time, usually one hour. The players must solve several puzzles in order to find a key and escape from the room before the time limit. Variations exist where the primary goal is to solve a mystery or unlock an item.

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