Digital Escape Rooms: A Tool for Orientation and Promotion

Abstract

Digital escape rooms are interactive puzzle-solving games increasingly used for educational, training, and promotional purposes. In library settings, they provide engaging formats for instruction, orientation, and outreach. Although such games can be developed on various platforms, Google Forms remains one of the most widely used free tools due to its flexibility. Using Google Forms, we designed an informative digital escape room for the Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies at the University of Ljubljana. The puzzles incorporated authentic materials, including photographs of real spaces, a promotional video, and links to departmental information sources. In 2024, our digital escape room was tested with 125 participants, followed by a survey exploring their play experience. Results indicate that participants felt enthusiastic, cheerful, and playful during gameplay, and perceived the game as innovative, creative, useful, and interesting. They also confirmed that they learned new information about the department. Although incorporating authentic and timely information into digital escape rooms enhances awareness and learning, it also introduces challenges related to ongoing verification and updating. Therefore, careful design and planning are essential to balance authenticity and timeliness with puzzle structures that enable efficient revision.

Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency, research core funding No. P5-0361 (Modelling of Bibliographic Information Systems).