Audiology Escape Room: A Case Study

This case study describes the process of designing and implementing a discipline-specific escape room activity to encourage teamwork, networking, and communication while also promoting discipline-specific knowledge and learning outcomes.

Audiology is a multifaceted profession involved in the assessment and management of hearing loss and balance disorders in adults and children (Audiology Australia, 2020). Audiologists work in a range of settings that can include public, private, education, and primary health care. The Northern Territory audiologist community is a small one with less than 30 audiologists in total. To assist with professional development, an annual event is held to provide training and networking opportunities for audiologists from different sectors.

Effective training of adult learners requires training content and training methods to be meaningful and engaging. Traditional training methods for professionals include didactic or lecture style teaching while contemporary training methods can include gamification or elements of game design to place learners into problem solving and decision-making roles. This creates learning challenges and rewards completion of challenges (Guglielman, 2012).

Game-based learning has many advantages including engaging learners and increasing retention of training content (Totara, 2020; Eukel et al, 2017). Rewards and challenges also appeal to highly competitive learners and individuals who enjoy interacting with others. By 2017, commercial and educational escape rooms had been become increasingly popular (Brown et al, 2019; Clarke et al, 2017).

An educational escape room is a time-limited, live-action group endeavor in which participants unravel a series of problems and puzzles (Zhang et al, 2018; Jambhekar et al, 2019). It incorporates problem-based learning and aids in the development of critical-thinking skills (Jambhekar et al, 2019; Jaramillo et al, 2019; Wu and Hein, 2018). Discipline specific educational escape rooms have shown positive learning outcomes for nursing, pharmacy, and medical disciplines (Wu and Hein, 2018).