by Library News
Student Run Escape Room Educates People About Art
Library Patrons got the chance to learn more about art repatriation through a student-created escape room held in December at the UTA Central Library. The escape room provided people with a unique hands-on educational experience.
Julia Baar, an Art History major, came up with the idea, built the escape room, and ran with some help as part of an independent study. Through this escape room, Baar wanted to test the educational value of gamifying the traditional museum experience and developing critical thinking skills.
Pictured are several of the puzzle boxes and clues used in the escape room.
“I think that everyone who came through really enjoyed themselves. I have had a lot of students, a couple of professors, and children come through the escape room,” Baar said. “We had a bunch of failures in the beginning, but after we fixed and smoothed things out. People could solve the puzzle in the room in about 35-40 minutes.”
Traditionally an escape room is a room or a series of rooms where a group of people is locked inside. While in the room, they have to solve a series of puzzles to escape the room within a certain amount of time.
This is one of the puzzle boxes used in the escape room that was at the UTA Central Library.
In Baar’s escape room on the second floor of the Central Library, participants had to solve puzzles related to art repatriation and successfully “escape” the room. Clues to solving these puzzles were scattered throughout the room.
Baar stated that the feedback from people who went through the room was positive about having fun and the information they learned through solving the mystery. She is looking at publishing a paper about the experience and going into the field of art entertainment. Baar is looking at creating an expanded and upgraded version of the escape room she made at the library.
Pictured is the escape room that was set up at the UTA Central Library.
To help create the escape room, Baar applied for an Open Initiatives Grant from UTA Libraries. The grant helped to pay for items for the room, such as lock boxes, to create an immersive experience for the user, along with paying for staff to operate the room when Baar was not on-site.
The library also provided additional items from other departments to decorate the room.
Nicole Spoor, Director of Experiential Learning, said the Open Initiatives Grant is used to help faculty use the library as a resource in the courses they teach at the university and to help students with projects.
She noted that this past year, UTA Libraries saw some great projects from faculty and students, but they did not meet the grant qualifications. However, the grant qualifications were re-evaluated, which allowed the first student project, Julia Baar’s escape room, to be funded.
Nicole stated the projects funded through the Open Initiatives Grant must focus on student success, utilize the library in some way, and the applicant must be willing to publish openly.
She shared that Baar’s project highlighted all those aspects and was proud that UTA Libraries was happy to help her with the escape room.
To find out more about the Open Initiatives Grant, https://libraries.uta.edu/services/teaching-learning/open-initiatives-grants.
Pictured is one of the clues used in the escape room that was set up at the UTA Central Library.
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