Thinking outside the box: developing key skills of future learning disability nurses through engagement in a digital escape room (Lightning Talk)

Description

Lightning Talk (10 minutes) summary

Digital escape rooms on the learning disability nursing degree have become established at Birmingham City University (BCU) following a response to the covid 19 pandemic. Opportunities have arisen to develop staff digital skills and confidence to create innovative approaches to learning using digital escape rooms. As one of the largest nursing education providers working within limited resources and current financial constraints within higher education, we utilised existing digital platforms (H5P and MOODLE) and worked as a team to embed these in modules delivered to 3rd and 4th year nursing students and apprentices flexibly using both online, face to face and asynchronous approaches.

The leadership module was the catalyst which led to the development of these digital escape rooms. These were created by learning disability nurse lecturers and reflect the creativity used to demonstrate their leadership, problem-solving, understanding of Blooms taxonomy and communication skills through a range of activities delivered in a linear format. This enables students to reflect on their team working, consolidate learning and support delivery of evidence based high quality care that relates to their future employment in an authentic way.

The development and implementation of digital escape rooms led to improvement of staff and student competence and confidence in participative digital pedagogies. Our approach was recognised, shortlisted and presented at conference to upskill and influence nursing lecturers at BCU. Following this, we were asked to present at other faculties including Art Design and Media, Business Law and Social Sciences and Computing, Engineering and Built Environment.

We supplemented this with a visual poster which we used to facilitate a stay and play session, giving a brief overview of aims, methods, timeline, discussion, results, feedback and future directions and we propose to use this format for the 10 minute lightning talk.

Period	15 May 2025
Event title	Escape Rooms in Education Showcase
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International