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One of the unexpected hazards of having an online classroom, she found, was keeping the “stream” in her itsLearning and GoogleClassroom platforms from being overwhelmed with assignments. She knew that for students to be successful, they needed to know where to find assignments and how to quickly access each of the sites that were used often. As a result, Miss Graybosch organized all student assignments into a separate class for each quarter. To gauge her students’ understanding of their online classroom, Miss Graybosch presented them with an Escape Room Challenge.
The Escape Room was built as a Google Form to be completed as students answered questions and “unlocked” the room. Questions were basic, but focused on precision such as, “On your itsLearning Course, what color is the Science square?" and "What GoogleMeet code do we use for our Individual Writing Conferences?” She began by sharing the link to the Google Form in the chat during her GoogleMeet session which allowed her to monitor student progress during the challenge. By monitoring the Google Form she could see who had escaped and then allow them to move on and exit the Google Meet. Students showed they were struggling if they had not exited the Escape Room by the end of the GoogleMeet session. This allowed her to chat or talk with the student privately and to see exactly which questions had proved most difficult for the individual.
Miss Graybosch has quickly adapted to the online classroom environment and her students are lucky to have such a creative teacher who eagerly creates games to engage her learners. Her use of the Escape Room was a novel way to determine individual student knowledge of their online learning environment while also helping the teacher provide equitable access to each student.
Written by Sarah Gillam, Chapel Glen iTEC Teacher