As someone passionate about sustainability, I’ve always believed in the power of experiential learning. This belief led me to design an escape room activity that combined learning and fun to educate students about eco-fashion. Using prompt engineering with ChatGPT, I created a multi-level escape room, tested it with my school thrift club, and watched it become a roaring success. Here’s how I leveraged AI, refined my ideas, and developed an engaging activity that left participants inspired.
Why an Escape Room?
I began with a simple question:
Prompt: "Suggest an interesting activity for middle and high schoolers to learn about eco-fashion."
I got a detailed list of options which included donation drives, quizzes, upcycling activities and many more. Among the options provided, the idea of an escape room stood out. It offered the perfect mix of collaboration, problem-solving, and creativity while allowing students to engage deeply with eco-fashion topics.
Step 1: Developing the Theme and Storyline
Prompt: "Create a theme and storyline for an escape room about eco-fashion suitable for middle schoolers."
Result: The storyline revolved around a fictional unethical fashion company, "Fast Fash Co." Participants had to transform the company into an eco-friendly brand by solving puzzles across three tables.
Step 2: Structuring the Rooms
Prompt: "Divide the escape room into three tables, each focusing on a specific eco-fashion-related topic. Include fun and educational activities for each room."
This generated a draft for three rooms, but the activities required tweaking to be more accessible to middle and high school students.
Room 1: Fast Fashion office: The Budget Dilemma
For the first room, the initial activity idea was straightforward. Participants had to identify areas where a company should increase or decrease investments to adopt sustainable practices.
Minimal refinement was needed for this prompt was needed, as it gave me exactly what i needed. I just asked it to add more decreased investments as those were less in number.
Prompt: "List areas where companies need to increase or decrease investment to become sustainable in fashion."
This generated lists like:
- Increased Investments: Organic cotton, fair wages, biodegradable packaging.
- Decreased Investments: Sweatshops, mass production, plastic packaging.
I refined this into a card-based activity where students matched areas with "increase" or "decrease" arrows.
Room 2: The Toxic Factory
This room required more detailed prompts and iterations.
Prompt 1: "What are the harmful chemicals used in fast fashion, and why are they harmful?"
Result: A list of chemicals like formaldehyde, azo dyes, and chlorine bleach, along with their negative impacts.
Prompt 2: "Suggest eco-friendly alternatives to these chemicals."
Result: Alternatives like natural dyes, hydrogen peroxide, and water-based inks.
Prompt 3: "Create an activity where students match harmful chemicals with eco-friendly alternatives. Include descriptions of each for clarity."
Result: A matching game where students paired harmful chemicals with their alternatives, aided by descriptions of their uses, harms, and eco-friendly replacements.
Room 3: The Sustainable Design Studio
This room evolved significantly during the process.
Prompt 1: "Where are eco-friendly raw materials like organic cotton and bamboo sourced globally?"
Result: A list of materials and their countries of origin.
Prompt 2: "Add clues about each country to make it easier for students to identify them."
Result: Clues like “Home of pandas” for China (bamboo) and “Famous for Bollywood and spices” for India (organic cotton).
I turned this into an activity where students are given eco friendly raw materials for which they had to choose the country from which it had to be sourced. To make it easier, I gave clues about each country as well.
Testing and Impact
I tested the escape room with my school thrift club. Students were divided into three groups and rotated through the tables, solving puzzles collaboratively. The group that completed all tasks accurately in the least time was declared the winner.
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive:
- Students: "This activity was fun and made me think about eco-fashion in ways I haven't thought about before! Working with my teammates was fun too!"
- Teachers: "The activity was innovative and deeply engaging to the students and saw great participation."
Prompts Summary (along with a lot of tweaking at my end, but you get the idea!)
1. Activity Selection:
- "Suggest an interesting activity for middle and high schoolers to learn about eco-fashion."
2. Theme and Storyline:
- "Create a theme and storyline for an escape room about eco-fashion suitable for middle schoolers."
3. Room 1 (Budget Dilemma):
- "List areas where companies need to increase or decrease investment to become sustainable in fashion."
4. Room 2 (Toxic Factory):
- "What are the harmful chemicals used in fast fashion, and why are they harmful?"
- "Suggest eco-friendly alternatives to these chemicals."
- "Create an activity where students match harmful chemicals with eco-friendly alternatives. Include descriptions of each for clarity."
5. Room 3 (Sustainable Design Studio):
- "Where are eco-friendly raw materials like organic cotton and bamboo sourced globally?"
- "Add clues about each country to make it easier for students to identify them."
Conclusion
Designing this escape room was an incredible learning journey. I have simplified many of the prompts here, but I guess this gives you an idea about my journey. Prompt engineering helped me brainstorm and refine ideas, and testing the activity in my school thrift club brought the concept to life. The success of this escape room showed me the power of interactive learning in spreading awareness about eco-fashion.
If you’re looking for an innovative way to inspire change, why not try this escape room yourself?
Head here to my site youth4ecofashion where you can get all the details, materials and printables needed to conduct this interesting activity in your school or community!
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