A DIGITAL ESCAPE ROOM APPROACH TO GEOSCIENCE FIELD EXPERIENCES

A rapid transition to online teaching presents a massive challenge for geoscience courses with a field component. Field courses are already under increasing pressure to be made accessible as the geoscience community seeks to broaden diversity and inclusion. In the absence of budget concerns, travel restrictions, and time constraints, technologies exist that allow for immersive and advanced online field experiences. However, these tools often come with a high financial cost, a time commitment to learn and use, and involve datasets inaccessible to some digital devices.

Digital escape rooms have become increasingly popular in primary and secondary education as a cost-effective way to engage and challenge students. Participants solve a series of puzzles or complete tasks in exchange for passwords that will allow them to “escape the room”. While less used in higher education, they are a practical solution to the need for accessible, low-cost, and engaging digital field experiences. In a sophomore-level geoscience digital escape room, students complete challenges at each “stop” such as hand sample identification from photos or videos, interpreting a compass face to determine bedding or fault orientation, predicting lithology or structure along or across strike, or fitting data to the tectonic history of the region. By answering questions correctly, they can move to the next stop, are provided with clues and additional data needed for their final map, and receive affirmation for their work. Group work means students get the opportunity to balance strengths and weaknesses (some of which may be technology and access based) to solve problems while still allowing for cohort-building, something geoscientists often attribute to intensive field experiences. Videoconferencing allows students to share screens to analyze multiple sources of data and to ensure that students understand how each stop fits into the overall big picture.

If the instructor has previously taught the information in the field, this type of exercise can often be built with preexisting multimedia. Google Forms, the most widely used platform for digital escape rooms, is free and easy to use. As geoscience departments face shrinking budgets and accessibility concerns, this approach provides a possible solution to the modern field geology conundrum.