One room, 60 minutes, five puzzles and the only way out is to solve them. That’s the challenge facing students at the ANU School of Computing.

Tapping into a global trend of escape rooms — where participants are locked in a room and must solve puzzles in order to get out — the innovative teaching exercise is the creation of Senior Lecturer Dr Bernardo Pereira Nunes and aims to teach computational thinking, problem-solving and collaboration, while having a bit of fun.

Students are given an hour to solve five computer science puzzles in a room filled with cobwebs, hidden tools and props that double as clues.

“I had this idea a couple of years ago,” Pereira Nunes said. “I had experienced an escape room and I started thinking how could I do this for my students?”

The design of the neon-lit room, as well as the riddles, clues and accompanying software, were developed by Pereira Nunes’ tutors and former students, who admit they are a little jealous of his current cohort.

Students enrolled in the Software Design Methodologies course were invited to organise themselves into teams and choose a time slot to try their luck. Each of the puzzles addresses different topics taught in the course, including software testing, design patterns and unified modeling language (UML).

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