The Successful Researcher Escape Room Dr Simon Rees

The Challenge 3 teams of Postgraduate Students were challenged to devise an Escape Room

Skills development Participating in this project developed a wide range of skills for the

What is an Escape Room? An Escape room consists of a series team-based games

The Escape Rooms were designed within the galleries of Durham University’s Oriental Museum. The

They produced plans for the Escape Room showing how each puzzle was connected and

Teams of academics were then challenged to complete the Escape Rooms as part of

Next steps… • The Escape Room team are now working a virtual Escape Room

Acknowledgements • Many thanks for the hard work and creativity of the postgraduate students

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The Successful Researcher Escape Room Dr Simon Rees Head of Researcher Development Durham Centre for Academic Development (DCAD) Durham University simon. rees@durham. ac. uk

The Challenge 3 teams of Postgraduate Students were challenged to devise an Escape Room activity to explore the attributes of a successful researcher. The Escape Rooms that they designed were then undertaken by a range of academics participating in a leadership programme. The Escape Room designers were: Robin Watson, Mariam Sarhan, Rhiannon Lees, Henna Bains, Aoife Curran, Ying Ye, Kathrine Bertram, Patricia Manzano-Rodriguez and Maria Martini.

Skills development Participating in this project developed a wide range of skills for the escape room designers (the postgraduates) and the participants (the academics) such as: Creative thinking; Logical thinking; Collaborative and team work skills; Persistence; Puzzle design; Developing narrative; Presentation skills.

What is an Escape Room? An Escape room consists of a series team-based games where players discover clues, solve puzzles and accomplish tasks in order to accomplish a specific goal (usually escaping from the room) in a limited time. They encompass the use of games based learning as a mechanism to engage the learner and develop skills. "Escape Room participants" by Ninja Escape is licensed under CC BY 2. 0

The Escape Rooms were designed within the galleries of Durham University’s Oriental Museum. The students were provided with training and then showed great ingenuity in designing puzzles that incorporated the museum’s collection.

They produced plans for the Escape Room showing how each puzzle was connected and developed unique props.

Teams of academics were then challenged to complete the Escape Rooms as part of a leadership development course. Comments included: - Really enjoyed the team work; - Interesting to see different people’s approaches; - Useful to reflect on research skills; - Definitely something I would do with my research group.

Next steps… • The Escape Room team are now working a virtual Escape Room themed around the challenges of completing a Ph. D. • The room requires the participants to solve a number of puzzles to highlight important things to consider when undertaking a Ph. D such as: collecting data, academic writing, referencing and supervisor relationships.

Acknowledgements • Many thanks for the hard work and creativity of the postgraduate students involved in developing the Escape Rooms. • This project has received funding from the Schoolbreak project (http: //www. school-break. eu/). • For further information, please contact simon. rees@durham. ac. uk