IB Collaborative Sciences Project.
On Thursday, July 24th, suspense was intertwined with science as the Year 1 IBDP students engaged in the Collaborative Sciences Project (CSP).
The Collaborative Sciences Project is a mandatory initiative of the IB, during which students from different science disciplines (Chemistry and Biology in our case) collaborate to incorporate their scientific knowledge into practical contexts. The main goal of the challenge is to develop collaborative skills between students, regardless of whether they have worked together in the past. Whilst completing the challenge, qualities of communication, adaptation and resourcefulness are strengthened.
The theme of the CSP at Mac.Rob this year was ‘Superheroes’. Hence, students were given the task of running a superhero-themed escape room for other fellow students! It is evident that there is a lot of scope and variety within running an escape room; therefore, we were exposed to escape rooms beforehand to gain some inspiration...
As we arrived at the RUSH escape rooms, all our classmates were in awe at how intricately detailed each experience was. One experience was centred around escaping a dragon lair, another involved taking on the role of a detective, and our room was a spin-off version of the nostalgic movie Monsters Inc. After using critical thinking to solve puzzles, decoding messages in foreign languages, and looking in places where we would never expect to look, we managed to escape our room with only one minute remaining on the clock!
After this point, we had gained some inspiration and ideas, so we returned to school and used these as guidance to create our own escape room. With minimal guidelines aimed to help extend our creativity, some groups choose to utilise online simulators, while others created theirs on paper. Collaborating can be difficult at times, as there are so many different perspectives that may contradict one another. However, the escape room taught us to put aside our differences, actively listen to each other and compromise!
When it finally came time to run the escape rooms, every student who participated successfully demonstrated perseverance, curiosity and knowledge. It was great to see Mac.Rob students - or should we say, Macro Brainiac students - be challenged for a change!
As we concluded this amazing day, we were able to reflect on all that we had learned. We thank our teachers for organising this excursion, and hope to engage in more fun and educational opportunities like this in the future!
Antara & Leah