Towards Teaching Digital Electronics Using Escape Rooms - Volume 9 - Advance in Engineering Education

Oct 15, 2026

Teaching second year undergraduate digital electronics is positioned as a serious, skill-focused learning challenge. The paper embeds core digital logic concepts into an escape room game and reports iterative pilot trials with engineering faculty before classroom use with students. Results indicate promise for using escape rooms to enhance undergraduate engineering education through engagement, immediate formative feedback, and collaborative problem solving aligned with accreditation needs.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Designing the escape room game requirements

Digital electronics puzzles

Feedback from faculty and students

Reflections and future work

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SPRING 2021 VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 Towards Teaching Digital Electronics Using Escape Rooms ROBERT ROSS AND RICHARD HALL Department of Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, 3086, Australia Tel.: +61-9479-1593 E-mail: [R. Ross@latrobe.edu.au](R. Ross@latrobe.edu.au) ABSTRACT Teaching second year undergraduate digital electronics is a serious business, designed to impart individual technical mastery. In this paper we attempt to embed several key digital logic concepts within an escape room game. We report results of iteratively piloting our game with academic engineering staff and then used them with students showing promise for using escape rooms to support undergraduate engineering education. Key words: Digital Electronics, Game Based Learning, Student Engagement INTRODUCTION Gamification, infusing game mechanics into products and services, was touted by (Pettey and van der Meulen, 2012) as a next-generation method for engagement, given humans seem “hard-wired”to enjoy games (Hamari,Koivisto, and Sarsa, 2014) . We see this in a multi-billion dollar gaming industry which encompasses electronic games, board games and gambling games (Kücklich, 2005) . A gamification stampede ensued in business and other training areas. However, in 2012, Gartner said that by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives due to poor design (Pettey and van der Meulen, 2012) . Games designed by professional game designers, are, as it turns out, better than games designed from scratch by novice game designers. A better strategy for novices, which we follow, is to adapt an existing game concept; in this paper we adapt escape rooms for use in the engineering classroom. SPRING 2021 VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Towards Teaching Digital Electronics Using Escape Rooms In escape room games participants play the role of story characters locked in a room. They use whatever is in the room to solve puzzles, finding keys to escape (Wiemker, Elumir, and Clare, 2015) . The concept has seen strong commercial success, with many escape room venues opening around the world. Nicholson’s survey suggests that escape rooms appeal to males and females equally with common participant groups comprising of corporate, families and dating couples (Nicholson, 2015) . While traditional escape rooms temporarily lock up the participants within custom-designed rooms, other versions (online games and board games [e. g. EXIT, Escape Room the game]) do not require such rooms and instead give a more compact and cost effective table-top experience. Hence, there is no requirement for educational variants to provide actual rooms to stay true to the escape room genre. Our table-top adaptation helps create a scalable experience which better suitsan educational context (rather than creating lots of small rooms and trying to supervise or schedule them all) . The escape room concept of finding keys is suitable for adaptation to digital electronics as electronic devices can represent numbers and operations thereon. The key is produced simply by correctly applying domain knowledge. Successful escape gives immediate formative feedback. In addition, the escape room concept of finding keys collaboratively is also worth mentioning. Engineers after all need to verbally communicate their discipline specific knowledge which is core to most accreditation requirements. Keys can be created that require a certain amount of activity too great for a lone super player to perform in a certain amount of time. The work must at least be divided and aggregated at speed to compete. Ideally, all players will be immersed in that game-player state of mind known as flow somewhere between frustration and boredom (Weber, Huskey, and Craighead, 2016) . Gamification in educational products

FAQs

What is the main goal of the paper on teaching digital electronics?

To embed key digital logic concepts into an escape room game and evaluate whether this approach can support teaching second-year undergraduate digital electronics.

How was the escape room game tested before classroom use?

The game was iteratively piloted with academic engineering staff, and then used with students to gather feedback and observe learning support.

Why are escape rooms considered suitable for digital electronics learning?

The paper argues that digital electronics operations can represent numbers and actions, escape success provides immediate formative feedback, and collaborative key-finding supports communication of discipline knowledge required by accreditation.

Oct 15, 2026

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