Design, Discover, and Decipher: Student-Developed Escape Rooms in the Virtual Ecology Classroom.

There has always been a need for engaging assessments in online learning environments, though the COVID-19 pandemic further emphasized this need. Instructors across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines have begun to implement escape room activities as effective and engaging learning tools in their classrooms. For our virtual introductory ecology course in spring 2021, we developed a student-designed escape room assessment which aligned with several course goals and covered a broad range of ecology concepts. The learning objectives of this assignment asked students to (i) create a themed "room" filled with ecology-based riddles and puzzles that represented a novel virtual escape room for their peers based on an important ecological topic, (ii) summarize and synthesize primary literature into clues and locks to educate their peers about an ecological topic, and (iii) use critical thinking and discussion of ecological topics with peers to solve their peers' escape rooms. We found that while students generated distinct escape room activities and focused on various ecological topics, student scores on this assessment, as well as student feedback, indicated that the escape rooms were conducive to learning, novel, and accessible in the virtual learning environment. We suggest that student-designed escape room assessments are an effective way for students to learn course material in a fun, engaging, and creative manner, and our spring 2021 implementation suggests that this activity may be an effective assessment for online settings.