{"id":4741,"date":"2021-10-13T17:16:38","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T21:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/?p=4741"},"modified":"2023-02-02T15:12:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T20:12:42","slug":"building-an-escape-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/building-an-escape-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Building an Escape Room With Google Forms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The adventure continues! Back in August, I wrote a post <a href=\"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/run-your-course-like-dnd\/\">comparing course design to Dungeons &amp; Dragons<\/a> and promised to share some tools and ideas for gamified activities you can try yourself. This is the first: an escape-the-room\/choose-your-own-adventure-style puzzle you can create using Google Forms. All Emersonians have access to Forms via their Emerson Google accounts. To find it, go to <a href=\"http:\/\/drive.emerson.edu\/\">drive.emerson.edu<\/a>, click the \u201cNew\u201d button at top left, and select Google Forms. Forms can be collaborated on and shared just like Google Docs. Here\u2019s a guide that can help you <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/docs\/answer\/2839737\">learn the basics of form-building<\/a>. You may also find this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CYdbniiYE-M\">video tutorial<\/a> helpful.<\/p>\n<p>The following is a playable example of a Dante-themed escape room. In a literature course, this could be navigated together in-person or via Zoom to help students make connections and get excited about the material. It could also be used in place of a traditional quiz. If you\u2019d like an editable copy of this to experiment with, <a href=\"mailto:adam_engel@emerson.edu\">email me<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/forms.gle\/L2aBaTew42mVgBUWA\">Journey Through the Dark Forest<\/a> (view-only version)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a collection of resources on building escape rooms using Google Forms:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1h30NB8LqioLVHahyXzlGKndF4pRhwiM9\/view\">How to Design Escape Rooms<\/a><\/p>\n<h2><b>Tips for Building Escape Rooms<\/b><\/h2>\n<h3>Navigation<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Map out each area and puzzle of your escape room on paper before starting to build it!<\/li>\n<li><b>For obstacles<\/b>: use short answer questions and enable &#8220;<b>Response validation<\/b>&#8221; using the menu button at bottom-right of the question. For the validation, choose \u201cText\u201d and \u201cContains,\u201d then type in the answer. This is useful for locks and passwords, since the player can&#8217;t advance without providing the specified input. Response validation is case-sensitive and can only have one possible input.<\/li>\n<li><b>For branching paths<\/b>: create sections, then use multiple choice or dropdown questions and enable &#8220;<b>Go to section based on answer<\/b>&#8221; using the menu button at bottom-right of the question. Specify to which section each answer choice leads. You can also loop back to previous sections or go to the form&#8217;s &#8220;Submit&#8221; button.<\/li>\n<li>You can place <b>clues<\/b> (letters, numbers, etc.) throughout the form and end with a short answer question that has response validation enabled. The player needs to find all the clues and put them together to get past the final question (or &#8220;lock&#8221;).<\/li>\n<li>Make all questions <b>required<\/b> so players can&#8217;t skip them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Giving Points<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>You can go to your form&#8217;s Settings tab and make it a <b>quiz<\/b> to enable correct\/incorrect answers, points, and answer-specific feedback. Scores won&#8217;t transfer to Canvas, but you can create a no-submission assignment in your Canvas course for entering grades.<\/li>\n<li>In the form&#8217;s quiz settings, uncheck &#8220;<b>Respondent can see correct answers<\/b>&#8221; if you want students to have multiple attempts without knowing the answers.<\/li>\n<li>You can use quiz points to determine success or failure. For example, you can state at the beginning that players must finish the adventure after earning X points to win. Points can be missed by taking the wrong path and missing questions, or by answering incorrectly. Students can use the <b>View Score<\/b> button at the end to see how they did. This is useful for questions that have correct answers but can&#8217;t block progress, like checkbox questions.<\/li>\n<li>Even with Quiz enabled, individual questions will only have points and correct\/incorrect answers if you click <b>Answer Key<\/b> and add them. So you can have a mix of for-points and not-for-points questions. Use the not-for-points questions for navigation (i.e. do you take the left or right path?).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Finishing Touches<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Customize your form&#8217;s appearance using the <b>Appearance <\/b>button (palette icon) in the top toolbar. You can also add images to questions.<\/li>\n<li>Click the <b>Preview <\/b>button (eye icon) to test your form as you work on it.<\/li>\n<li>Click the <b>Send <\/b>button and select the <b>link<\/b> tab to get your form&#8217;s shareable link. Anyone with this link can access your form.<\/li>\n<li>Go to your form&#8217;s editor and click the <b>Responses<\/b> tab to see responses and scores. If you&#8217;re in view mode, click the pencil at bottom-right to reach the editor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Group Activity Suggestion:<\/b><\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Model a digital escape room for your students and play through it as a class.<\/li>\n<li>Demonstrate how the game was made (you can stick to the major features such as appearance, sections, short answer questions, and multiple choice questions).<\/li>\n<li>Split students into small groups.<\/li>\n<li>Ask each group to create a new escape room around a theme of their choice related to your course\u2019s content. Hint: what would be useful to be immersed in?\n<ol>\n<li>It may be helpful to ask them to map out the game first in an outline (a Google Doc could work for this).<\/li>\n<li>Ask the groups to limit the scope of their game in some way (could be 10 sections max, or should take no longer than 10 minutes to explore).<\/li>\n<li>This step is best done between class periods since it can take time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>Play through each group\u2019s escape room together in class.<\/li>\n<li>Reflect on the experience in a discussion. Example questions:\n<ol>\n<li>How did collaborating with your group make this experience different than it would have been if you were working alone?<\/li>\n<li>Why make a game like this as opposed to a traditional quiz?<\/li>\n<li>What challenges did you face in creating the game? How did you overcome them?<\/li>\n<li>What would you do differently next time, and why?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Have you tried a choose-your-own-adventure or escape room activity in your course? Tell us about it by emailing <a href=\"mailto:ITG@emerson.edu\">ITG@emerson.edu<\/a>!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><i>Photo by<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@gcalebjones?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\"><i>Caleb Jones<\/i><\/a><i> on<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/s\/photos\/forking-paths?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\"><i>Unsplash<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The adventure continues! Back in August, I wrote a post comparing course design to Dungeons &amp; Dragons and promised to share some tools and ideas for gamified activities you can&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1772,"featured_media":4721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[106,6,8],"tags":[20,24,32,108,107,43,113,72],"class_list":["post-4741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-humanities","category-explore","category-google","tag-building-community","tag-collaboration","tag-digital-tools","tag-games","tag-gamification","tag-google","tag-google-forms","tag-quizzes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1772"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4742,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions\/4742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}