Escape Room + Science Lab: Murder Mystery Fun and Educational Event
Escape Room
I had the good fortune of time and support to turn a classroom into an escape room as a Journeyman Innovation Fellow at the West Houston Institute. I have used it several times with my history classes. They love it!
Escape Room + SciLab
My colleague Dr. Brian Mahon (professor of biology) came up with the idea for a crime science event that would utilize both his SciLab (Student Collaborative Innovation Laboratory) and my escape room. We decided that Halloween would be the perfect time to do it.
Theme
The escape room is loosely themed as a Victorian study, so we put the time period in the 1890s. This is also around the time that Francis Galton and others were writing about the use of fingerprinting in forensics. I dressed as a steampunk historian and Dr. Mahon dressed as a mad scientist.
We set the stage with decorations in the lobby and a short narrative. “There has been a murder!” We invited illustrious scholars (students) to help us solve the crime. In the escape room, they would search for clues in Sherlock Holmes’ study where they would learn the motive. In the SciLab, fingerprinting experiments would help them determine the identity of the killer.
SciLab
In the lab, students used traditional graphite dusting and DNA methodology to conduct fingerprinting experiments. They were given a series of “suspects” to narrow down based on the experiments.
Puzzle Sets
My original escape room is designed to easily slot in multiple-choice, matching, and other questions pertaining to subject matter. This enables professors to use it as a content assessment as well as a community-building activity. However, this means that if a student has already gone through the escape room, they know all the puzzles and clues.
So, I challenged myself to create a second set of puzzles that wouldn’t duplicate the first. This way, if students repeated the room, they would get a new experience. I was also inspired by the fingerprint activities in the SciLab to center fingerprints in the puzzles.
MakerSpace Element
We have an amazing maker space in the building called the IdeaStudio. Whenever I want to create something, I go straight there. I told my colleague Robin Nagy who is the Program Coordinator for the IDEAS Academy that I wanted to make a fingerprint jigsaw puzzle. She had the idea to make it in the shape of an oval and helped me last cut the whole thing into clear acrylic.
Reception
Predictably, the students loved it. We will be running the event again for professors soon. And we plan to host it next year as well!
