An Escape Game to rediscover great inventors, an innovative teaching method at IMT-BS

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Institut Mines Télécom Business School (IMT-BS) developed an educational escape game on the topic of great inventors and inventions. A perfect introduction to its Creativity and Innovation Week, to encourage teamwork in a project-based environment. 

Ever year, 450 management students from IMT-BS and Télécom SudParis take part in Creativity and Innovation Week, an educational program that is one of the highlights of their studies. This week of courses, conferences and collaborative workshops gives students the opportunity to try out creative forward-looking methods such as design fiction and design thinking.“We naturally thought that an escape game would be a good way to kick off the week and get students thinking while fostering team building,” explains Flavien Bazenet, research professor at IMT-BS, holder of the Digital Inventions Chair and designer of the educational game.

At the start of the week, the students are divided into groups of seven, with students from both schools in each group. They spend an hour solving a series of puzzles retracing the major steps of the digital revolution. The escape game, co-designed with the teaching team from IMT Nord Europe, uses the potential of digital technology to give this experience an immersive aspect. Some of the puzzles must be solved in augmented reality to encourage interaction with the environment, and others by putting together physical objects (cards, books, etc). “In all cases, the players must collaborate and learn how to work as a team,” says the research professor.

The Game Masters in charge of running the rooms all reported that it worked well and that the teams fully participated. Feedback from the 358 students shows a satisfaction rate of 81.9% – the highest of any of the 20 activities offered during the week. The game is still being tweaked. For the next edition, Flavien Bazenet hopes to make it easier to use and deploy it on a larger scale through open-source. dissemination.

This is an educational innovation project submitted for the 2021 IMT Teaching Awards.

Illustrator: Lionel Tarchala