Digital Escape Rooms Using Canva and Genially

Outline

- Introduction (5 mins): Welcome, session goals/ISTE Standard connection, and digitial escape room inspiration

-Pedagogy & Framework (10 mins): Unlocking student skills & building an effective multi-step escape room

-Visual Design & Clue Creation in Canva (15 mins): Workshop participants follow along as we use Canva to quickly create essential visual assets (clues, hidden text, background images).

- Interactivity & Digital Locks in Genially (20 mins): Live demonstration and workshop of building the interactive environment in Genially, including creating invisible clickable areas, setting up page links for puzzle pathways, using layers and overlays to strategically embed key information for abstraction, and simulating digital password locks to establish robust interactivity.

- Wrap up (10 mins): Discussing strategies for differentiating content within the escape room. Sharing customizable templates and a checklist workflow.

Outcomes

Attendees will walk away with customizable design templates, a step-by-step framework for transforming content into interactive puzzles, and the confidence to immediately create their own digital escape rooms in any subject area.

- Participants will be able to design a multi-step digital escape room using a logical puzzle flow framework.
- Participants will be able to apply Canva's design tools and Magic AI to create compelling visual assets (clues, characters, backgrounds, hidden objects).
- Participants will be able to create an interactive, clickable environment built in Genially using its features (invisible areas, drag-and-drop, page links) to integrate robust digital locks and puzzles.
- Participants will be able to utilize the escape room format for content review, differentiation, and project-based assessments across various subject areas.

Supporting research

Veldkamp, A., et al. (2025). Educational escape games in primary and secondary education: a framework synthesis review.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20004508.2025.2476271#abstract

Escape Rooms for Education: A Meta-analysis (Published in International Journal of Instruction, 2024).
https://www.e-iji.net/dosyalar/iji_2024_4_13.pdf

https://genially.com/features/interactive-content/

https://www.canva.com/magic-design/