Adapting a Classroom Simulation Experience to an Online Escape Room in Nutrition Education

Due to the COVID-19 emergency transition to remote learning, an undergraduate class in nutrition and dietetics modified a face-to-face experiential “escape room” assignment into a comparable online experience. The online assignment was structured so that students had to use knowledge and clues to move through each step of the Nutrition Care Process; students proceeded through the escape room individually until each successfully “escaped.” An important component of this assignment was the postactivity debriefing process, which took place via video conferencing in small groups. Students indicated that they were pleasantly surprised at the effectiveness of the online assignment. However, analytics showed that students progressed through most of the steps fairly quickly; thus, instructors plan to improve future deployments by using a variety of interactive assessments and adding more layered criteria and clues within each of the escape room steps.