From Locked Rooms to Open Minds: Escape Room Best Practices to Enhance Reflection in Extended Reality Learning Environments

Extended reality (XR) learning environments result in greater knowledge gains when coupled with opportunities to reflect on one’s actions and learning. However, when and how one should prompt reflection in XR learning environments (XRLEs) to effectively enhance learning, without breaking immersion, remains an open question. In this work, we argue that we can extract insights on how to design effective, immersive reflection for XRLEs from the expertise of escape room game masters (GMs) who regularly provide reflective hints and prompts in complex, immersive problem solving environments. To explore what we can learn from GMs, we conducted exploratory semi-structured interviews with 13 escape room GMs and, via iterative open coding, captured their best practices in how they provide hints and give nudges to escape room players. From these results, we present a foundation and model of how GMs observe and intervene and discuss implications for XRLE-based reflection.