If you'd walked by Professor Susan Detwiler's Writing and Critical Inquiry (WCI) classrooms at the University at Albany-SUNY on September 7, you would have seen something rather unusual: two teams of students huddled around tables, preoccupied with locked boxes and an assortment of other materials. Engaged in animated, yet hushed, conversations to keep the other team from overhearing, the students puzzled over cryptic messages and secret codes, hoping to unlock the box and reveal what was inside. Some of the materials on the table provided clues, others turned out to be red herrings.The students were working with BreakoutEDU, 1 an immersive games platform. Building on the growing popularity of escape rooms, which challenge players to "break out" of their surroundings using clues and puzzles, this collaborative team-building experience can be applied in educational settings to meet a range of learning objectives.After attending a conference session about BreakoutEDU this past summer, Trudi Jacobson, head of information literacy, returned full of ideas about how it might be used to facilitate student learning. The idea was eagerly embraced by her two colleagues at a planning meeting for the fall semester's jointly taught class sessions: Susan Detwiler, member of the WCI faculty, and Kelsey O'Brien, information literacy librarian and liaison to the WCI Program.
Coteaching modelWCI is a required seminar for first-year students, in which students learn the thinking, writing, and reading mindsets and strategies necessary for their academic careers and beyond. These objectives dovetail with the university's general education information literacy requirements, and so over the last several years, the three of us have worked closely together to strengthen students' research skills and deepen their understanding of how to engage in academic inquiry.At the center of both the WCI course and the information literacy program is developing students' practice of inquiry. As outlined by program standards, WCI students complete a sequence of three major assignments. First, they write to explore experiences or phenomena in the world. Then students write an analysis of a relevant issue or question that arises from the first assignment, incorporating scholars' interpretation of that issue or question. In the final paper, students write to join in the appropriate scholarly or broader conversation of that issue or question. This carefully structured sequence of Susan Detwiler is a member of the WCI faculty, email: sdetwiler@albany.edu, Trudi Jacobson is head of information literacy, email: tjacobson@albany.edu, and Kelsey O'Brien is information literacy librarian and liaison to the WCI Program at the University at Albany-SUNY,
