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How ‘virtual escape rooms’ are helping students enrol during Covid-19

Thanks to Covid-19, enrolling at new schools has become a challenging process on all fronts. With campus tours and face-to-face interviews off the table, admissions officers are now evaluating prospective students through virtual escape rooms.

It turns out ‘escape room’ experiences have uses beyond bringing workmates together for novel team bonding sessions, or inspiring the naff horror movies on Netflix.

Covid-19 rapidly changed the landscape for schooling throughout 2020. Social distancing regulations have seen teachers turn to readily available video call apps like Skype and Zoom to continue lesson schedules, while proctoring tools have become a popular solution to monitor students during exams.

Though far from perfect, schooling has adapted fairly well to a challenging situation through the guise of tech. However, with campus tours and face-to-face interviews still very much out of the question, student applicants have few ways to get a taste of their prospective schools before making enrolment choices.

When it comes to private schooling, admissions officers are seriously clutching at straws for ways to properly assess applicants too. You’d be right in thinking the best academic performers will secure their places, but for the percentage of students on the borderline of required grades, there aren’t many ways to judge secondary factors like individual character or problem solving abilities.

Recently though, a San Jose middle school called The Harker School – described as ‘one of the nation’s top college prep schools’ – may have found a unique solution to help both students and admin get through this awkward period: virtual escape rooms.

With virtual pub quizzes and party games booming throughout the pandemic, The Harker School decided to create a series of themed puzzles centred on the principals of escape room mechanics. This intends to test a student’s problem solving abilities while allowing their natural personality to shine through.

Built to inflame the imagination of the school’s sixth grade (11 year old) prospects, The Harker School enlisted a Denver based company which specialises in online escape rooms called Paruzal. It’s certainly a unique USP, we’ll give them that.

Paruzal

Through a blend of affordable low-tech operations: a Zoom call, PowerPoint-esque slides, and a game master to lead the events, Paruzal worked with Harker to devise several games of varying difficulty. Some even include subtle references which will score brownie points if particularly bright students pick them out.

Set in quirky environments, like Bruce Springsteen concerts, coffee shops, and pizzerias, students are put to the test on time sensitive tasks like, ‘Can you find the backup coffee beans before the food critic arrives?’ and ‘Will you get to meet Springsteen in his dressing room before the journalist arrives and interrupts you?’

One of the more demanding games is said to recreate the setup of the school’s real life annual picnic. Supplies to build the event are concealed in coded lockers, the combinations buried in various sections of Harker’s library.

With the answers hidden cryptically amongst background objects, like posters or recipe notes, and often requiring arithmetic and subversive guile to complete, students tell the game master which location they wish to focus on prompting them to switch to the appropriate slide.

Paruzal

Overall, in this particular game – which changes regularly to avoid any potential cheating – students averaged a completion time of 33 minutes. I dread to think what mine would be at 26 years of age.

‘Of course, the score isn’t the only factor.’ Says Paruzal chief James Warner, suggesting that monitoring player interactions is just as valuable. ‘You take notes on the various performances to identify a student that screams at one of their counterparts in the game, or maybe there’s somebody who’s building consensus.’

Crucially though, the best part about this idea (and why it is likely to be adopted by other institutions) is that it provides many students with a fair oppurunity to make the cut.

Eric Nichols, Vice President of enrolment management at Loyola University Maryland sums up perfectly by stating, ‘For students on the borderline academically, these skills can help an admission office decide who to take a chance on. It puts everyone on an equal playing field.’

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