Leveraging Escape Room Popularity to Provide First-Year Students with an Introduction to Engineering Information

Abstract

Incoming first-year engineering students at the University of Toronto often have difficulty navigating the library and its resources. Orientation activities at the Engineering & Computer Science Library are designed to introduce students to the library in an informal and entertaining way. In 2017, as a result of dropping interest in previous years' orientation activities, librarians at the Engineering & Computer Science Library collaborated with instructors and staff in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering to develop an orientation activity grounded in curriculum and based on the popular escape room game. Core library services and engineering resources were used to build a challenging program that introduced students to basic, but essential, research skills. Voluntary student participation in the game exceeded previous years' participation and all expectations of the game designers.