Mechanics Escape Room: Escaping the Monotony of Solving Problems: Fid-Bau Portal

Mechanics Escape Room: Escaping the Monotony of Solving Problems

Rocha, Brett / McMullen, Kevin F.

Completion of an escape room activity requires participants to work as a team to find hidden clues and solve challenging puzzles to escape before time expires. The use of escape rooms for active learning may produce a positive classroom environment by improving teamwork skills, encouraging engagement with course materials, fostering intellectual curiosity, and facilitating conceptual understanding beyond the prescribed procedure. An escape room was developed for the Mechanics of Materials course at the United States Military Academy. The escape room was designed based on a hypothetical theme to increase student motivation and curiosity. Students were required to complete five puzzles that involved navigating through underground steam tunnels to locate the boiler in the classroom building where their final examination would take place. This task was intended to force the cancellation of the examination. The five puzzles assessed the students’ knowledge of torsional members, statically indeterminate axially loaded members, flexural members, stress transformation, strain transformation, and thin-walled pressure vessels. The escape room was piloted in five sections ranging from 15 to 18 students. Teams of five to six students completed the escape room activity. The escape room increased active participation and made the students aware of the concepts they needed to focus on for the final examination. This case study includes details on the complete design of the escape room, including the problems presented, results of student teams, and student feedback.