# Educational Escape Rooms as an Active Learning Tool for Teaching Telecommunications Engineering
## 3 Evaluation and Results  
In this section, we present the results based on surveys and feedback recorded after participants completed each of the puzzles. A total time of 50 min per escape room was allowed for the activity. We had two separate cohorts domain expert testers complete the escape room individually. We had the testers complete the tasks individually as for this study we were less interested in evaluating teamwork and peer learning and more interested in getting expert feedback on our puzzles within the game based learning approach. These testers were experts in electronics and or communications engineering fields, but did not necessarily have any expertise in game based learning or escape rooms specifically. The first cohort consisted of 4 academics who have a backgrounds in electronics engineering or telecommunications. This cohort was selected as they have significant experience in teaching and can provide an instructors insight into the activity. The second cohort consisted of 11 professional engineers. This cohort was selected as in some cases they had fresh memories of what is was like as student and can provide feedback on the activity in the current context it is used. Each of the testers were provided with the same relevant written lecture materials to provide background for each of the escape room puzzles. This was provided as the escape room activities are run in an open book format and although our domain expert testers have a background in the area, their knowledge on the particular subject matter will likely be less at the forefront of their minds compared to the students who are just learning the material. The writen lecture notes given to the participants are a subset of the full lecture notes that will be supplied to all students studying the course. Testers had access to the notes both before and during the activity. For each puzzle participants were surveyed with a Likert scale based on how difficult they perceived it (1 = very easy to 5 = very difficult), how much they enjoyed it (1 = strongly  
Figure 3: Scale map of island for computation of Free Space Path Loss (FSPL). The Parity and LRC puzzles were judged the hardest based on their repetition (although some respondents said they were still easy). Both of these puzzles required lots of computation, took longer to solve and so are better suited to using some teamwork (which our testers did not have the benefit of). Several testers required some clues on the parity puzzle to get started with it being conceptually confusing which bit was the parity bit and what they meant to do with it. In contrast the Modulation and Free Space Path Loss puzzles were rated as the easiest. We expect this was because they were a little less cryptic (although the modulation puzzle still required participants to work out which frequency and phase corresponded to a zero and one) and faster to complete. As a general rule we try to keep the easiest puzzle for end (and the most difficult puzzle near the middle) as towards the end participants are often racing the clock and may start to get weary. In relation to the puzzle enjoyment we are encouraged that no-one strongly disliked our puzzles, but several testers did dislike the parity puzzle. Their comments suggest this was in part working out the trick to solving the puzzle and in part that lots of repetitive operations that were required (specifically in number base conversions and ASCII look-up). This repetition is deliberate (to give an opportunity for teamwork and practice) and will be less apparent when tasks are completed in teams rather than individually (as our testers completed them). Within the classroom clue delivery is automated (every 5 min one digit is revealed) which should also help students who are stuck trying to get started. One tester stated that they used an Excel spreadsheet and another wrote custom Python scripts to solve the first two puzzles in Escape Room 1. This software approach is actually the same approach we used in designing the puzzles.