Escape the Planet: Empowering Student Designers to Create a Science-Based Escape Room with Augmented Reality

Abstract

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City implemented a science-based curriculum pairing augmented reality (AR) with a student-designed escape room experience to support astronomy learning. AR has the potential to simplify complex systems into digestible concepts. Designing an escape room experience provided students with an exciting opportunity to apply their understanding of astronomy concepts. This paper (1) presents a background of the curriculum, our development process, and describes the student-design framework, (2) describes the design of the escape room and the activities to facilitate science learning, (3) discusses how we utilized augmented reality in the course (4) presents design issues and revelations, and (5) proposes future changes.