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E-Learning Challenges
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How are Escape Room Games Used in E-Learning #432

DavidAnderson's avatar
3 years ago

Using Escape Room Techniques in E-Learning #432: Challenge | Recap

Escape rooms are adventure games where a group of players are locked in a room (real world or digital) and tasked with solving a series of puzzles and challenges to unlock a door leading to their escape.

Popular escape techniques include: 

  • Locks and Keys: Locks and keys are foundational technqiues for unlocking new clues, items, or levels of the game.
  • Sequence Puzzles: Players complete tasks or steps by clicking, sliding, dragging, or turning objects in a specific order.
  • Hidden Objects: Players search the room for concealed items for solving other puzzles—a good opportunity for drag-to-reveal interactions.

Even if you'd never consider using an escape room-type game in your own courses, they're still a fantastic way to practice advanced techniques. And that's what this week's challenge is all about!

✨ Example of an Escape Room Game

Here’s a fantastic example from Karlis Sprogis of an escape room created in Storyline 360. 

View the example | Learn more about the project

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you reveal your example, check out the creative ways course designers reduce on-screen text and boring bullets in e-learning:

Bullet Point Makeovers RECAP #431: Challenge | Recap

🏆 Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share an example using escape room techniques. You can choose any theme you like for your demo.

The thing with escape room games is that they can go from tricky to frustrating quickly. Try to find ways to integrate hints, clues, and even cheats into your example.

👋 New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.

Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article

📅 Next Week’s Challenge & Webinar

Got an idea for a challenge? Are you interested in doing a webinar showcasing how you made one or more challenge demos? Or do you have some comments for your humble challenge host? Use this anonymous form to share your feedback:  https://bit.ly/ElearningChallengeForm.

Published 3 years ago
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54 Comments

    • JeffHerman's avatar
      JeffHerman
      Community Member
      How did you achieve highlighting the items in the image? The borders look so precise!
  • I think a big Northern European company could hire you to make their store tour more fun, Jonathan. Everything is so well done, with so much humor. Even the soundtrack: so cool. You know you're a star when you have a piece of home decor to your name. Oh, by the way: it's a perfect escape game.
    • Jonathan_Hill's avatar
      Jonathan_Hill
      Super Hero
      Thanks Thierry! I'll share my master file shortly as I've had a bit of computer trouble this week.

      There's a surprising amount going on behind the scenes, including some Javascript to modify the appearance and behaviour of the lightboxed slides. There's also some script that recognises if it's being viewed on a mobile device, and disables some of the hover over interactions so it performs better.

      Like a lot of escape rooms, this is really best played on a bigger screen and with a mouse, but I've also tried to make it as accessible as possible through the focus order, too.
  • Hello!

    Full disclosure: I'm not a big fan of escape rooms in e-learning, as I have yet to see a really compelling use case for them. Achieving the right level of 'desirable difficulty' is hard. But I'd like to keep an open mind.

    I also hate going to a certain well-known furniture store.

    So this happened:

    I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO GET OUT OF HERE
    Demo: https://bit.ly/elhc432
    Download: https://bit.ly/elhc432dl
      • Jonathan_Hill's avatar
        Jonathan_Hill
        Super Hero
        It does contain some background audio which on a slower Internet connection may cause the demo to load more slowly. I'd also recommend using a desktop or laptop computer rather than a mobile device, where this load lag can be more pronounced.
    • KristinaRodier's avatar
      KristinaRodier
      Community Member
      Amusing from beginning to end! Thanks for sharing Jonathan :)