Escape the Lab: An Interactive Escape-Room Game as a Laboratory Experiment

An escape-room-game activity was introduced to foster team building and collaborative learning in a laboratory-experiment setting. The students were placed in a laboratory with clues and puzzles that required the students to use a sequence of analytical instruments in the laboratory in order to escape. The instruments utilized included a UV–vis spectrophotometer, an FTIR spectrometer, a gas chromatograph, and a gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer (GCMS). Student groups solved the puzzles and escaped by identifying a mystery compound at the end of the game. Student surveys indicated that the students enjoyed the lab and that they felt it was an effective review of laboratory techniques.