Escape Game on Genially

Initial situation

Originally, the course had a standard structure and an evaluation based on assignments and a written final exam.

The health crisis of 2020, with the move to online courses, has reinforced the need to redesign the structure and assessment of the course to encourage student curiosity, engagement and stimulation. Creating a more dynamic and manageable online course has become a necessity.

The online passage allowed, at first, to test new modalities of evaluation in the form of online quizzes. However, these quizzes had become the norm for many courses and were no longer popular with students.

The teachers therefore thought of making knowledge assessment more dynamic by creating an online escape game with the Genial.ly Academy tool. Their goals were to increase student engagement, teach them discipline-specific knowledge and develop cross-cutting skills, particularly problem solving, teamwork and creativity.

Project implementation

Two quizzes have been created in the form of escape games, proposed to students in teams of 2-3 people as an evaluation in the middle and at the end of the semester. Each escape game has a limited duration of 1h30.

In order to make the students understand the typical environment of an escape game, a Mock Exam with an escape game was first developed, with the theme of “The Future”, in line with the objective of the course to learn how to make predictions. A first test for the escape game was done with the students the week before to show them how the different challenges appear and to familiarize them with the software.

In the first game, called “Time-Machine Adventures”, players encounter real historical figures such as Pythagoras or Aristotle in Antiquity or general characters specific to their era such as knights or monks in the Middle Ages. The game includes questions and tasks based on the themes covered in the first half of the semester.

The theme of the second game is inspired by the famous adventures of Sherlock Holmes, where players have to solve criminal cases to catch Professor Moriarti, who is threatening the people of London. This game is centered on the themes covered during the second part of the semester.

Each game has been designed in-house with four “rooms” corresponding to four different levels, from easy to hard. To move from one level to the next, students must answer all the questions correctly. All “rooms” contain various elements of animation, interactivity and games.

Each “room” includes 4 questions to be answered, for a total of 16 questions. A correct answer is worth 0.25 points. The difficulty of the questions increases progressively at each level. The simplest level offers simple MCQ questions with only one correct answer. The last levels offer different tasks, ranging from calculations to perform/apply to open-ended questions. To succeed, the learner must have a good understanding of the subject matter and be able to apply his or her theoretical knowledge. A good collaboration of the different team members is also important.

To evaluate the success of the escape game, the teams receive a number after completing a room. The success of the 4 rooms allows to obtain 4 numbers which are combined in a code to be transmitted by email to the teacher. In case of interruption, the group sends the last number obtained and the answer to the last question obtained, which allows the teacher to know at what level the group stopped to give a grade. In “Sherlock Holmes”, after solving each of the 4 cases, the students get 4 pieces of the map to assemble at the end and complete the mission - “capture” Professor Moriarti. In case of interruption, the teams transmit the answer to the last question answered/task accomplished.

The complete evaluation of the “Forecasting with Applications in Business” course is composed of the study of a randomly chosen practical case for 10% of the grade, the first quiz in escape game for 20% of the grade, an assignment to be handed in after the practical work for 25% of the grade, the second quiz in escape game for 20% of the grade and another assignment to be handed in after the last practical work for 25% of the grade.

Thoughts and advice

At the beginning of the use of Genil.ly, it is recommended to take time to learn the functionalities and the existing plug-ins of the tool if you want to use it as much as possible. Then, additional time is needed for the development of the concept and for the implementation of the escape games (reflection on the theme, creation of rooms, game dynamics, scenarios, etc.).

Gathering the visual material and textual content to create the whole story also requires time, even though Genial.ly and its community of users already provide a lot of material.

For the content part, questions of different levels of difficulty and specific to the assigned level need to be created and formulated in advance. They must be well thought out in order to lead the student to a progressive learning process.

Finally, the testing phase is very important and it is crucial to take the necessary time to properly evaluate the whole game. It must be tested several times.

One of the great advantages of this innovative evaluation tool is its reusability: once created, it can be reused in subsequent years.

Student feedback

“Escape Game = alternative & fun.”

“The escape-game is something really nice that I really enjoyed. It really differs from other courses, and it allows for a funnier way of evaluating the course (less stressful, while still requiring to know the course).” “It is nice having an escape game.”