It’s not just a game: A proposed method to examine the use of an escape room in team building

Is this project an undergraduate, graduate, or faculty project?

Graduate

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What campus are you from?

Daytona Beach

Authors' Class Standing

Andrew C. Griggs II, Graduate Student Elizabeth H. Lazzara, Faculty Mentor

Lead Presenter's Name

Andrew C. Griggs, II

Faculty Mentor Name

Elizabeth H. Lazzara

Abstract

Countless industries rely on effective teams to function. Team processes, the mechanisms by which teams coordinate their efforts to work together, have large impacts on outcomes such as team effectiveness. To improve team processes and outcomes, organizations rely on interventions such as team building or training. Escape rooms are receiving attention as a game-based avenue to facilitate such interventions in the past five years. Escape rooms are a recreational, team-based activity wherein multiple individuals must work together to solve a series of challenges or puzzles in a limited time. Escape room team building interventions are largely nascent in the literature and their efficacy in improving team processes or outcomes is not well understood; the escape room research literature has not yet examined the sustainability of such interventions, performed comparisons between participants and non-participants, or leveraged measures of team processes. Therefore, this research aims to advance the science underlying escape rooms as a team building intervention. This research will utilize archival data from 36 teams completing an escape room team building activity at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Differences in team processes and team effectiveness based on task completion will be assessed. Behavioral indicators and perceptions of team processes will be used to examine relationships between teamwork and task completion. Additionally, this research will use prospective survey data from prior and non-prior participants at Cedars-Sinai to assess the effects of participation on perceptions of team processes and team effectiveness over time and the magnitude of such effects compared against non-participants.

Did this research project receive funding support from the Office of Undergraduate Research.

No

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It’s not just a game: A proposed method to examine the use of an escape room in team building

Countless industries rely on effective teams to function. Team processes, the mechanisms by which teams coordinate their efforts to work together, have large impacts on outcomes such as team effectiveness. To improve team processes and outcomes, organizations rely on interventions such as team building or training. Escape rooms are receiving attention as a game-based avenue to facilitate such interventions in the past five years. Escape rooms are a recreational, team-based activity wherein multiple individuals must work together to solve a series of challenges or puzzles in a limited time. Escape room team building interventions are largely nascent in the literature and their efficacy in improving team processes or outcomes is not well understood; the escape room research literature has not yet examined the sustainability of such interventions, performed comparisons between participants and non-participants, or leveraged measures of team processes. Therefore, this research aims to advance the science underlying escape rooms as a team building intervention. This research will utilize archival data from 36 teams completing an escape room team building activity at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Differences in team processes and team effectiveness based on task completion will be assessed. Behavioral indicators and perceptions of team processes will be used to examine relationships between teamwork and task completion. Additionally, this research will use prospective survey data from prior and non-prior participants at Cedars-Sinai to assess the effects of participation on perceptions of team processes and team effectiveness over time and the magnitude of such effects compared against non-participants.