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Educational escape rooms in practice: research, experiences, and recommendations

The following e-book was prepared as part of the Erasmus+ UNLOCK project, which has the objective of identifying the use of educational escape rooms (EERs) in higher education environments and examining the role of educators in those activities. The document presents a review of the existing body of academic literature on EERs, while capturing current approaches and practices from across the diverse line of disciplines, and challenges experienced in the adoption of EERs in the (higher) education settings. The literature review provides an overview of the status-quo of the EERs in the higher education sector, followed by UNLOCK project partner country reports (Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania, Portugal, and Spain) for targeted insights on the adoption of EERs in the local (higher) education contexts. We also present the synthesis report provides a discussion of the major findings, along with emerging themes and recommendations for further EER research and practice.

Taking Sustainable Tourism Planning Serious : Co-designing Urban Places with Game Interventions.

The Book Fair Game: teaching international rights trading in a shared module

When preparing students for the industry’s global context, publishing degrees aim to provide them with experience of cooperating and doing business with colleagues internationally. In order to achieve this, Oxford Brookes University and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences have designed a module on trading in translation rights that gives students both a theoretical framework and real-world insights into book fairs and intercultural collaboration.In this module, students of both universities work collaboratively in a game that simulates the trading of intellectual property rights at an international event designed to resemble a major book fair. They team up in international groups of five or six students that each represent a publishing company in order to prepare for and to participate in an event called the Oxdam Book Fair. Preparation for the fair involves the development of plans and appropriate materials to sell translation rights for the company’s titles and to buy rights to titles which fit the company’s profile and strategy. During the event students partake in several rounds of rights trading activities, including pitching, strategy meetings, making offers, and networking.In this proposed paper, that contributes to the best practices-strand of the conference, lecturers of Oxford Brookes University and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences will provide a ‘behind the scenes’-look at this collaborative module. They will talk about the simulation game that is the core of the module, provide background on the theoretical framework, address educational design challenges they encountered, and share outcomes of the collaborative module.

Are some individuals more susceptible to intercultural education than others? Multicultural personality predicts the effects of an intercultural training on cultural intelligence

The development of intercultural competences has become a prominent goal for many study programs in higher education. A widely used frame to measure intercultural competence is Cultural Intelligence (CQ). While empirical research has focused extensively on the development of CQ by means of (student) mobility and long-term training, the effects of short-format trainings – a more cost-effective intervention that can be provided to a large number of participants – remain understudied. Existing findings are inconclusive, and it remains unclear under which conditions, and for whom, short-format interventions are effective in improving participants’ CQ. We propose that CQ development is contingent upon individual differences in multicultural personality traits (operationalized through the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, MPQ). More specifically, in this study we investigate (1) whether a short-format (6-hour) training improves CQ among higher education students (n = 108), and (2) whether the development of CQ is moderated by students’ social-perceptual and stress-related MPQ trait scores prior to the training. Using a pre and post-test design we found that across the whole sample, all four facets of the CQ increased after the training. We also found that some social-perceptual traits of the MPQ moderated the development of CQ: Social initiative on Metacognitive CQ, Openmindedness on Cognitive CQ, and Social initiative and Openmindedness on Motivational CQ. Additionally, we did not find a moderator effect of stress-related MPQ traits on the development of Behavioral CQ. Based on our findings, we conclude that multicultural personality influences individuals’ susceptibility to intercultural education, underscoring the importance of individualized approaches in intercultural education.

Youth Care Knowledge Exchange through Online simulation gaming

A case study and method development research of online simulation gaming to enhance youth care knowlegde exchange. Youth care professionals affirm that the application used has enough relevance as an additional tool for knowledge construction about complex cases. They state that the usability of the application is suitable, however some remarks are given to adapt the virtual environment to the special needs of youth care knowledge exchange. The method of online simulation gaming appears to be useful to improve network competences and to explore the hidden professional capacities of the participant as to the construction of situational cognition, discourse participation and the accountability of intervention choices.

Oasistan: an intercultural role-playing simulation game to recognize cultural dimensions

Aim. Although cultural dimensions theory is a topical strand of quantitative cultural research, few intercultural simulation games use it. We present the design and review of the application of OASISTAN, an intercultural role-playing simulation game that is specifically based on cultural dimensions theory. Method. OASISTAN was first designed in 1999 for use in Master’s courses on cross-cultural management at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, attracting 20-23 year old students with a Bachelor degree in engineering and from various cultural backgrounds. Since its first design the game has been played approximately 45 times at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and three times at Harbin Institute of Technology in China in the years 2006-2008. We reviewed their experiences designing and facilitating OASISTAN since 1999. Results. The game has a no-tech role-play design and revolves around the geopolitically complex region of the Caspian Sea, specifically the fictional country of ‘Oasistan’. The game consists of students forming small teams of Oasistani, Western and non-Western public/private actors collaborating with each other to try and reach the common goal of oil exploration and production in this country. In total 15-30 students were involved. We found that OASISTAN allowed its players not only to intensely experience the difficulty and awkwardness of being confronted with cultural differences, but also to interpret and understand these differences through cultural dimensions. Students who played OASISTAN identified ten out of the 12 dimensions by Maleki and De Jong. The two dimensions that students were not able to identify are uncertainty avoidance and collaborativeness. Conclusion. OASISTAN shows how a game design field (i.e., intercultural simulation gaming) can be reinvigorated in light of new or updated scientific theories pertaining to the field’s subject matter (i.e., cultural dimensions). Several opportunities for future research are identified.