WYPR Highlights UBalt Class on Creating 'Escape Room' Play for Libraries
May 15, 2023
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A University of Baltimore class is featured in a WYPR radio feature on what libraries are doing to welcome young people who are coming back to the stacks after the pandemic. The UBalt class, led by Rachael Zeleny (pictured with her students, second from right), assistant professor in the Klein Family School of Communication Design, and teaching assistant Melissa Foley-King, a librarian at the Hamilton Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library system, is creating materials and concepts for "escape rooms" as a way of educating and entertaining elementary-age students in a library setting.
The UBalt class taps into the popularity of escape room gaming—players use a series of puzzles and clues attached to a storyline to make their way out of a closed place—and applies it to the safe setting of a library.
"Zeleny realized that maybe the popular escape room trend could be a perfect way to help libraries not only educate but also entertain kids," WYPR reports. "She realized that with a bit of creativity, she could have her undergraduate students build and design complete escape room kits that could go out and be kept in libraries."
Prof. Zeleny notes that anxiety levels among students went "through the roof" during the pandemic.
"Those of us who are trying to gamify education, we're trying to find alternatives to assessments, so that students could still be able to respond to that pressure of needing to finish something in time without having to have the same crippling anxiety that they would if it was a test," she says.
WYPR highlights the efforts of the UBalt class to create escape room kits and concepts that could be made available to libraries, where, according to Foley-King, students are showing up in large numbers.
"I work in a library where I have 40 to 50 kids every day after school, and we have to not only keep them safe, but find something for them to do every day," she says. "So I'm just forever trying to … think outside the box for stuff for them to do."
Read the WYPR piece on the UBalt class and Enoch Pratt Library staff collaborating on escape room play.
Learn more about Prof. Zeleny.