Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) are publicly accessible materials and resources which are freely licensed and confer permissions to the user to retain, remix, reuse, revise and redistribute. Building on Katrine Sundsbø’s work creating the Open Access Escape Room and EARMA 2022, we partnered to create the OER Escape Room to engage and inspire learners and explore the creative application of gamification in teaching and learning about OER.

This collaborative presentation, much like the escape room itself, is targeted at those with no prior knowledge of OER. The Escape Room itself is designed to widen participation in and knowledge about OER and to educate in a lively and informative way which will spur discussion and be thought provoking. In the escape room, participants solve puzzles and interact with the escape room clues to learn key information about OER as they compete to win. Though participants do not escape a room, the aim of this game is to ‘escape’ the awful faith of being fired for not recruiting enough students… Can the teams create a new, innovative and, most importantly, FREE(!) module in 45 mins?

Katrine Sundsbø, creator of the Open Access Escape Room, delivered a series of sessions at EARMA in Oslo 2022, where Katrine, Sarah and Aisling met. A common frustration in the current landscape surrounding open scholarship, paired with three creative minds quickly turned into a gamification project, thanks to EARMA. Working around schedules, time zones, children, jobs and even a PhD – we created a physical escape room by meeting and chatting online over Summer 2022.

This interactive session will explain our process, the why and how we created the escape room, as well as lessons learned and learning outcomes. A 60-minute session will provide attendees with an opportunity to ask questions, play with clues and leave them with knowledge of the 5 R’s, CC licenses, open repositories, as well as an awareness of the ‘red herrings’ around OER (copyright, quality, etc). Participants will also learn tips and tricks for putting an escape room together themselves and principles of gamification.