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By: Claire Quimby
At Rockman et al Cooperative, one of the wonderful perks of our work is the amazing range of projects we get to work on. When we tell friends, family, and potential hires about what we’re working on, the subject area can be anything from quantum physics to immersive art exhibits, so long as there is an educational component to the work. For the past few years, the one project I’ve loved most to tell people about to illustrate this fantastic variety is VENOMventure which is – get ready for it – an inflatable escape room that teaches families to read evolutionary trees through clever puzzles and a storyline that features venomous plants.
This fantastical project is the brainchild of project PIs Lisa White and Anna Thanukos of UC Berkeley and Teresa MacDonald of the University of Kansas. Funded by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), VENOMventure has been traveling to museums and libraries across the United States for the past year, and I have had the joy to be part of the research team investigating the impacts of this very unique learning experience. From first hand observations, I can tell you without a doubt that VENOMventure is above all fun for the groups this project is targeting – families with children between the ages of 9 and 13. Even better, after 400+ surveys and interviews and observations with 50+ groups, we can say with certainty that participants are indeed learning to read evolutionary trees during their entertaining (and sometimes frantic) rush to find an antivenom for the problem plant. While the summative report should be available soon, we’re pleased to share this summary handout with key findings from the first four sites where the escape room traveled.
It’s wonderful to see the results of this project – one of many we’ve seen circumnavigate the hurdles of the COVID-19 pandemic to deliver a truly inspired learning game. As one parent told me, this game prompts a unique kind of collaborative fun for adults and children – something I hope to witness in other projects in the future.
VENOMventure will be at the ASTC annual conference in Chicago on September 28 and 29. You can sign up to play the game for free here! After this it will be visiting Estherville, IA in October and the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT in winter 2024/25! For more information on VENOMventure, visit UC Berkeley’s website here.