 Online forum on Educational Escape Room (EER) games in Higher Education | 1 October 2020
Setting to investigate ER games as an innovative approach to teaching and learning, Erasmus+ UNLOCK project invited academics, business and public representatives, and educators from all educational levels to participate in the half-day online event, to exchange knowledge and practices. The event delivered the results of the research phase (WP4) of the project, of how escape games are used for pedagogical purposes in the higher education institutions (HEIs) and involved a thematic discussion session, and two presentation tracks to share best practices and research from educational institutions. There was a total of 8 presentations and 52 participants in the event. Future networking bridges were explored among the participants, by the possibility of engaging with the project’s LinkedIn page (https://tinyurl.com/y5c6f4ux), where several themes in the scope of the project will be discussed among the community and updates on the project will also be disseminated. This is the resulting word cloud from the question posed to the participants of the event: What are the skills, knowledge, and attitude an educator needs to possess to be able to create and implement an impactful EER game?
2 Comments
 Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance Project UNLOCK: Creativity in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) through a Game Design Approach second consortium meeting has been held in online via Zoom conference on 7th October, bringing together 25 representatives from 8 consortium institutions including University of Aveiro (Portugal), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), Muenster University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), University of Granada (Spain), Bespoke (Denmark), Advancis (Portugal) and University-Industry Innovation Network (Netherlands).
The day meeting covered the progress of the deliverables and the status of the research phase with input from all partners. In addition to the sessions dedicated for the project related decision-making and discussions, the consortium has had the opportunity to host Annabelle Beyer from the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, to present the team about the simulation laboratory Think Space she coordinates and its didactic features. Selected as one of the good practices among the UNLOCK Project case study collection, Think Space represents a unique example as an educational escape room in its integration with the entrepreneurship course module to investigate the concept of uncertainty, and collaboration with the Escape Room company “Think Square” for its modern infrastructure and game design. As part of the presentation the discussions have focused on the impact of the COVID19 into the escape room operations and the systematic analysis of the student behaviour that take place through video recordings. On behalf of the consortium we would like to thank Ms. Beyer for her participation and very interesting insights she has shared regarding the working principles of Think Space. The first project results on the status-quo of the educational escape room games in the European context will be made available online in October 2021 via project website un-lock.eu, as well as an Online Forum taking place in the same month.  The University of Aveiro, as the leading institution of the UNLOCK project, organised the kickoff meeting at its Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism (DEGEIT).
The seven partner institutions from the consortium were present in the meeting: Fachhochschule Munster (Germany), Bespoke Aps (Denmark), Universidad De Granada (Spain), Kauno Technologijos Universitetas (Lithuania), Stichting Hogeschool Van Amsterdam and University Industry Innovation Network Bv (Netherlands), and Advancis-business Services, Lda. (Portugal). In this meeting, the consortium discussed the milestones of the project and decided on the first work packages activities, which included the branding of the project and the ground-breaking research on the theme of “Creativity in HEIs through a game design approach”. |
RSS Feed
