Your Design Brief

Now it's your turn. Apply the three-decision framework to a course you actually teach.

You just experienced the mechanism, false confidence, friction, resolution. Now you'll design one moment of that for your own students. Your answers become a personalized 2026 Design Summary and a starter prompt you can take to an AI platform. Answer as much or as little as you like.

Appears on your downloadable 2026 Design Summary

Jennifer Coon, CIA, CFE, Professor of Accounting, Tyler Junior College

Facilitated Session , Follow along on your device. Your presenter will guide the room through each station.

What concept are you testing?

One objective. Not the whole unit.
Pick the concept your students consistently miss, the thing that shows up wrong on every exam, the thing you find yourself explaining over and over. That's your game.
Design Principle, Focus Decision 1

The most common mistake in escape room design is trying to review everything. A game that covers ten objectives covers none of them well. The vault-code mechanism works because it forces a single moment of reckoning, students either understand the concept or they don't. Focus is what makes the friction real.

Name the one concept your game will test.

Pick Frame The Hook Works Well For
Forensic Audit "Something is wrong. Trace the steps to find the error." Accounting, Nursing, Coding, Math
Crisis Manager "The system is failing. Complete the sequence to restore it." STEM, Healthcare, Management
Time Traveler "You are stuck in the past. Sequence the events correctly to return." History, Literature, Humanities
Gatekeeper "Prove your skills to unlock the vault and earn your place." Career Prep, Speech, Ethics
Restoration "A text or file is corrupted. Use your knowledge to fill the gaps." English, Languages, Research
My own idea:

What does success look like in the room?

Name the win condition before you write a single question.
One sentence. What does a student do or know at the end of your game that they couldn't do or know at the start? Make it specific and observable.
Design Principle, Backward Design Decision 2

The vault-code system works because the code is the proof. Students can't guess their way to it, they have to understand the concept to produce the right answer. Your win condition is the code. Design backward from it.

Think in three vaults. Vault 1 gets them into the story. Vault 2 makes them work. Vault 3 is the moment of discovery, the thing that surprises them about what they thought they knew.

Define your win condition and map your three vaults.

How does it work in your classroom?

Design in-person first. The online version follows naturally.
A sketch of how this works physically, with real students in your real classroom, is the most important input you can give an AI platform when you are ready to build the online version.
Design Principle, In-Person First Decision 3

The physical version tells you what the experience actually needs: the sequence, the friction points, the moments where students talk to each other. Once you know what must happen, the digital container is a translation problem, not a design problem.

Sketch how this game works in your classroom.

Now, let's convert for online

The sketch you just made is your best starting point. Take it to an AI platform like Claude and share what you wrote above. Prompt it to help you translate your in-person design into an online version that preserves the same mechanism, not just the same questions. The more specific your sketch, the better the translation.

How would you deliver the online version?

What would it take?

You felt it
The false confidence gap, the same moment your students hit before every exam
You designed
A concept, a win condition, a vault map, and an online mechanism
You have
A template, not a wish list, a starting point you can actually build from
Before You Leave, Final Reflection This goes on your summary

The gap between "I could do this" and "I will do this" is real. Most faculty who leave a session like this with good intentions hit a wall within two weeks, time, technology, uncertainty about where to start.

Name the wall. That's the reflection.

What is the hardest part of your design brief, and what would it actually take to build it?

Badge Earned: The Architect

You designed it. You felt the friction. Now build one thing and run it.

Your starter prompt

Take this to an AI platform

Built from your answers. Edit anything you like, then paste it into Claude or the AI tool you prefer. Anything you left blank is filled with a default you can change.

Stay in Touch

Want to talk about building your own?
Reach out, happy to walk through implementation for any discipline.

Jennifer Coon, CIA, CFE

www.jcoondesign.com Professor of Accounting, Tyler Junior College, 2026 Built with Claude.ai