Providing access to course content in this remote environment is important, but we can’t stop there. How are educators engaging students to ensure a deep understanding of the course content? A great first step is going back to the 3 forms of interaction and intentionally planning to ensure they are met through activities and intentional instructional design.  

This article shares practical and meaningful ways to incorporate each into your courses.

“I wanted to give my class a good team-building activity in the beginning of the semester. I was a little nervous about having my class do the escape room — it is a little goofy, and I wasn’t sure if they would like it. But they really did like it! I first used it with my night class. We had already been in class for about two and a half hours. I gave them this activity to try in breakout rooms and they came back energized and excited.” 

Megan was inspired to create an Escape Room after attending the CCIT virtual escape room in November. She had created in-person escape rooms a few times for classes, so it was fun to find a way to make it work online. Megan shares a few tips for creating a successful escape room:  

Tips: 

• Get help from CCIT! Once you have a vision of what you want to do, they can steer you to effective tools. 
• CCIT suggested I create the “rooms” on Google Sites and use Google Forms to pose the questions and link to the next site, and that worked wonderfully! 
• Be willing to try something new — I had fun using sites (like Thinglink) I had not used much before. 
• It takes a while to make, so choose something you think will be valuable, and prepare it when you have time (I did mine mainly between the end of fall semester and the start of spring). 

• Plan meaningful questions, then find ways to make them fun and involve puzzles. 
• Check your process once you think you have it finished — be sure all answers are correct and that links work properly for correct and incorrect answers. 
• I gave my students class time in breakout rooms to try the Escape Room, and I also posted the link on D2L so they could use it later on their own if they wanted to.