Creating Educational Escape Rooms with Google Forms
Updated: May 18
By Guest Blogger, Kelly Lucero
Google Forms has typically been used in education to create surveys, sign-up forms, and quizzes. But what if Google Forms could be used to create engaging educational escape rooms?
What is an Educational Escape Room?
A traditional escape room has players use clues to solve puzzles to “escape” from a room within a time limit. Escape rooms can be simple or elaborate but typically give the escapees one to two hours to solve the mystery and escape.
An educational escape room (or escape room for the classroom) applies the same concept of using clues to solve puzzles, but the “escape” is usually a series of locks. Breakout EDU is an example of educational escape rooms where students unlock a set of puzzles to open a final puzzle at the end. An educational escape room typically ends with a fun prize or answer to a mystery. You want students to feel that they “have to know” what is at the end if they persevere to solve the clues. That is where you hit the sweet spot of increased engagement!
Why Educational Escape Rooms?
Educational escape rooms are a great way to increase student engagement by gamifying learning and adding student voice and choice to the learning process. In addition, working with others to solve clues and puzzles results in several key learning skills:
Communication
Collaboration
Problem solving
Critical thinking
Using Google Forms to Create the Escape Room Experience
Educational escape rooms can take time to set up, especially if you are using several locks and puzzles. However, your student's will LOVE them! Digital escape rooms have become popular in the last few years using tools such as Google Sites, Slides and Forms. For the following examples we will focus on Google Forms. With Forms anyone can quickly and easily create a digital educational escape room, and I’ll show you how!
Want to try an escape room before you create one? Link to one of the following examples: