Some lucky students at the University of Delaware have been taking what they’ve learned from a Research Methods class and using it to beat a custom-made escape room on campus.

Beth Morling, professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the university was inspired after hearing about a similar idea on social media involving the use of escape rooms for a hands-on student learning experience.

With the help of doctoral student and fellow Research Methods instructor Caroline Abbott, the duo came together to create 10 puzzles as part of the challenge.

The puzzles themselves were low budget and easy to make and, much like a commercial escape room, have to be completed chronologically by the players in order to ‘escape’. Students said the professor-made rendition was on par with their commercially available counterparts.

Natalie Epps, a sophomore in the class, said how impressed how dedicated her professors were to create their own puzzles using clues related to the class material.

The dedication, “made the experience much more fun” she went on to say.

The puzzles included word search problems, broken popsicle sticks that had to be used to spell out words, secret words written in hidden ink, foam darts and Tetris-style tiles. Each of the cost-effective puzzles was related to research methods that students had learned in throughout the year in the class.

Morling and Abbott proved that you don’t need to go overboard with expenses to create a fun and memorable escape experience!