Prison Escape Instruction - An Online Gamified Activity for an Online Course
Prison Escape - An online gamified activity
Introduction and Instructions
In Prison Escape, online students are divided into prisoner and police teams, and they utilise different types of transportation such as cars, buses, taxis and trains to travel on various routes with different nodes as travel stops on a PDF format map which students can download online. The map helps students to visualise where they are on the map and how to ‘catch’ the prisoners or ‘escape’ from the police. Animated YouTube videos have been developed to introduce the online exercise. Online students can use Moodle discussion forums (or any other form of communication such as facebook chat or whatsapp) to share their knowledge and ideas and thus all activities and decisions in the exercise are completely made online.
Prison Escape, an interactive, innovative and fun gamified activity, mimics complex real-world experiences (competitive and cooperative behaviours) without requiring students to be in a face-to-face setting. The exercise lasts for three weeks, allowing time for students in their teams to organise, manage and share knowledge/resources as well as to apply skills (e.g. teamwork and critical thinking) in an online environment. Prison Escape should be used in conjunction with assessment strategies which should be carefully developed and integrated to enhance student learning. After the exercise, instructors may ask students to prepare a self-reflective report which helps them to reflect on their own learning journey in the exercise, as well as to understand the course subject knowledge. The exercise and reflective report, when purposefully constructively aligned with course learning outcomes, can assist students to engage with their online peers, to develop critical concepts of the subject matter, and to practise skills that are associated with the course. Please contact the Author of Prison Escape, Associate Professor Eric Kong at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, at kongeric@usq.edu.au for any further enquiry of the online exercise.