- University News Archive - 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock /news-archive/tag/escape-room/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Thu, 17 Jan 2019 18:05:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Business Innovations Clinic Law Students Escape Just in Time to Cast Their Votes /news-archive/2019/01/17/business-innovations-clinic-escape-room/ Thu, 17 Jan 2019 18:05:48 +0000 /news/?p=73132 ... Business Innovations Clinic Law Students Escape Just in Time to Cast Their Votes]]> The Business Innovations Clinic works with small businesses and nonprofits to enhance economic development in Arkansas. Clinic students assist clients with issues ranging from legal formation, to intellectual property, and even drafting contracts. Last spring, the Business Innovations Clinic worked with Remix Ideas, LLC to teach and co-host an intellectual property law workshop called the ABC鈥檚 of Intellectual Property on the Bowen campus. Remix Ideas, a Little Rock social enterprise, focuses on accelerating black-owned business growth through mentoring, training, and consulting. Remix has hosted a number of community-based events, such as Africa Day Fest and multiple entrepreneur pitch contests. Through this partnership, the law school welcomed more than 40 African-American entrepreneurs into its doors for its workshop in April 2018. Two of the workshop attendees were Ericka Bennedicto and Juanenna Williams, co-creators and co-owners of the Underground Escape, Arkansas鈥 first social justice-themed escape room, named in inspiration of Harriet Tubman鈥檚 famed Underground Railroad. At the time of the workshop, the room was still in its infancy with only one room at a temporary location. Bennedicto and Williams created Underground Escape with the belief that fun activities, such as Underground Escape, have the potential to spur personal connection and conversations that last long after the experience itself. 鈥淎t Underground Escape, we combine recreation and education as a means to enlighten the community and raise consciousness around social justice issues,鈥 said Bennedicto. 鈥淲e try to use our business as a catalyst for social change and do this by using the escape room model as a fun and interactive platform to educate participants about social justice or civil rights issues.鈥 Armed with valuable information on how to protect their intellectual property and not infringe on the work of some of the civil rights leaders they hope to pay respect to in their business theme, Underground Escape opened a permanent location near 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock鈥檚 main campus on South University Avenue, with a second social justice-themed room. The first room, entitled “Give Us the Ballot,” focuses on the civil rights issues of 1957 and the Voting Rights Act.聽 The second room, “Saving Black Wall Street,” focuses on the history of an African-American commercial center in Oklahoma that was devastated by tragedy in 1921. As a team-building activity at the end of the semester, Business Innovations Clinic students had the opportunity to go through “Give Us The Ballot.” In this room, participants traveled back in time to 1957 to cast their vote. However, to do so, the group had to overcome Jim Crow barriers placed in their way. “Give Us the Ballot”聽included a number of interactive activities, such as puzzles, quizzes, and actual 1957 literacy test questions, before participants could cast a vote and escape the room. The students escaped from the room and were able to cast their vote in 54 minutes and 42 seconds 鈥搘ithout much time to spare. The experience included a debriefing by Bennedicto and Williams, who revealed fascinating insights into the students鈥 challenges and strengths. Business Innovations Clinic students found the intersection between entertainment and education to be refreshing. 鈥淥ne thing that really stood out to me was how they cleverly hid snippets of information around the room, hidden in each item we were tasked with unlocking,” said Abby Brenneman, a third year student. Another student, Jacob Bryan, echoed these sentiments. 鈥淚 found the references to the civil rights era to be a creative ice breaker for conversations concerning important social issues that are often difficult to discuss,鈥 Bryan said. Escaping from the room was no easy feat. Megan Douglas reflected that the escape room was harder than anticipated, but she enjoyed learning along the way by solving puzzles because the room did a great job of combining past history with present events that are often ignored and need discussion. Professor Kim Vu-Dinh, director of the Business Innovation Clinic, felt the room was a great supplementary teaching tool. 鈥淏eing able to visit the Escape Room was especially relevant to the goals of what we are trying to do at the law school,鈥 said Vu-Dinh. 鈥淔irst of all, it鈥檚 always a great experience for the students to see one of the businesses we counsel get up and running so soon after working with the clinic, but it鈥檚 especially exciting when you see students learn about civil rights history and the law in a hands-on way, because experiential learning is such a strong priority in the clinical setting, especially at Bowen. Best of all 鈥 it was fun!鈥 (Originally published in the Jan. 7-13, 2019, edition of The Daily Record. Reprinted with permission.)]]> 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock students use wits to beat escape room challenge /news-archive/2018/12/07/chemistry-escape-room-challenge/ Fri, 07 Dec 2018 16:11:40 +0000 /news/?p=72915 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock students use wits to beat escape room challenge]]> A group of chemistry students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock found out that book smarts alone were not enough to overcome an escape room final project.聽 Inspired to build teamwork amongst his students and to make class more exciting, Dr. Anindya Ghosh devised a unique escape room group project to challenge the students in his Intro to Inorganic Chemistry class. 鈥淚 was inspired by Dr. Kedar Jambhekar, radiologist and diagnostic radiology residency director at 糖心Vlog传媒MS, who recently did this for his residents to encourage teamwork,鈥 Ghosh said. 鈥淚 think that homework needs to be fun to help teach the students. No one has ever done this in the Chemistry Department. I hope that the students learn teamwork. This helps them to think outside the box and to think critically.鈥 Students in the class include Cecilia Cayll, Samantha Crosby, Robert Hill, Akeia Joyner, Arsalan Karimi, Caroline Kornelsen, Thuy Le, Tyler Maxwell, Victoria Mchargue, November Palmer, David Standridge, and Caleb Stein. The class divided into groups of four, and each group was responsible for creating puzzles involving chemistry lessons from class. The groups also had to use images from popular culture to give the teams additional clues. One group determined their number was eight after noticing that their clues contained a picture of a brown recluse spider with eight legs and a picture of a piano player whose hand spanned eight keys. 鈥淵ou would have to be a musician to figure it out, and I鈥檓 glad I am,鈥 said Akeia Joyner, a senior chemistry major. A second group figured out their number was five after having an image from the movie 鈥淭he Fifth Element,鈥 an image from a Cinco de Mayo celebration. Additionally, one of the answers to their chemistry problems was Boron, which has an Atomic Number of five on the periodic table.
Chemistry students Akeia Joyner and Victoria Mchargue had to solve a series of science problems to get clues to unlock their classroom door during an escape room challenge. Photo by Benjamin Krain.

Chemistry students Akeia Joyner and Victoria Mchargue had to solve a series of science problems to get clues to unlock their classroom door during an escape room challenge. Photo by Benjamin Krain.

鈥淚 think this is fun,鈥 said Cecilia Cayll, a junior chemistry major. 鈥淚t鈥檚 better than sitting in the classroom listening to a lecture or taking an exam.鈥 Each group needed to come up with one number as their answer. The combination of the numbers from all four groups would provide the answer to escaping the room. Even after all four groups worked together to escape the room, Ghosh put one more roadblock in the road to victory. The combination needed to open the chain that locked the classroom door only used three numbers, so students were also tasked with figuring out which number was left out and what order to put the remaining three numbers. It turns out that the most difficult part of the escape room challenge was putting the correct combination into the lock. Fellow classmates commented that it was 鈥渉ilarious鈥 to watch their classmates unsuccessfully try to figure out the combination. 鈥淲e鈥檙e book smart, not street smart,鈥 Cayll said. Students finally reached the correct combination, before the end of the class period, after they realized the lock was backward, and they had been inputting the combinations the wrong way. 鈥淚t was freaking awesome!鈥 Victoria Mchargue, a senior chemistry major, said. 鈥淚f every homework problem could be like this, where we have to find a way to get out of the room, it would be a lot of fun.鈥 In the upper right photo, chemistry students (L to R) Arsalan Karimi, Victoria Mchargue, and Caleb Stein celebrate their victory in escaping from their chemistry classroom after solving a series of puzzles. Photo by Benjamin Krain.聽]]>