Welcome to the Playful Activity Library! We invite you to explore this curated collection of active, playful activities designed for use in adult education settings. This library supports our playful learning community by showcasing inspiring practices, sparking new ideas, and encouraging collaborative connections. We welcome all forms of playful approaches—whether it’s a quick icebreaker, a creative classroom activity, or a fully developed board game. Whatever your contribution, we’d love for you to share it with the community!
This is an online escape room built in the free platform Genially. The room was created to play with academic staff to get them interested in using playful learning approaches. The narrative is that you are being sent back in time to a didactic lecture theatre and must solve the educational puzzles to escape back to the future. The puzzles are based on concepts and theory that is core to playful learning so this can be discussed in the game debrief. The answer to the jigsaw puzzle clue is criminology (the room was built for a workshop at RGU so features their campus). You can run the session using breakout rooms to scale it up but will need a couple of facilitators if you have more than 5 groups so you can manage queries during the game play. See the escape room using the link and the attached crib sheet for a full guide on how to facilitate the activity and solve the puzzles.
Emma Gillaspy
University of Lancashire
Social Profile
Small (30 or less), Medium (up to 100 if enough facilitator support)
Interaction, Goals
Collaborating, Reflecting
CC BY-NC-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/