Unlocking Learning: Escape Rooms as Transformative Pedagogy for Engagement, Service Learning and Professional Preparedness

This study explores an educational outdoor escape room implemented at University X to engage and enhance student learning. Designed collaboratively across faculties and staged outdoors at a city monument, the project provided authentic context for applying theory through interdisciplinary teamwork and narrative-driven puzzles. Findings reveal increased student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction, alongside improved problem-solving and conceptual understanding. Beyond engagement, escape room function as authentic assessments fostering higher-order skills aligned with Bloom’s taxonomy and inculcating transferable competencies such as collaboration, teamwork, communication, creativity that AI cannot replicate. Results highlight escape rooms as authentic, transformative pedagogy for sustainable innovation in higher education.