PuzzlEd: RAISE

In this interactive workshop, the HE Advance CATE (Spotlight) Award winning CrashEd team from De Montfort University will showcase our current innovative venture, PuzzlEd. Whereas CrashEd was the culmination of interdisciplinary subject specialisms including Criminology, Forensic Science, Physics, Maths and Policing, PuzzlEd has evolved from our differentiated personal learning styles. Between the team members, our varied strengths are represented including words (anagrams and homophones), associations (shapes, numbers, colours), language and images. By working together as partners, we have evolved our original collaborations which has culminated in an immersive and engaging pedagogic tool, that accommodates a range of learning styles and in doing so promotes teamwork and peer feedback. The purpose of PuzzlEd is to utilise the popular genre of escape rooms, whereby participants face tasks against the clock. We have created our challenges influenced from our own learning styles, resulting in an array of logic puzzles which when solved generate padlock codes leading to further clues. Underpinning PuzzlEd are numerous theoretical approaches such as Constructivist, Humanist and Connectivist, enabling scaffolding of learning and transformative opportunities. Utilising technology via computerised avatars as narrators further enhances the PuzzlEd experience for participants. This is a novel approach to teaching, learning and assessment, which will inspire and empower the higher education community.