Scavenger Hunts
A playful approach to experiential learning
We entered the ruins of a church. We found a little shop selling essences and ice cream with exotic flavors. We walked through a passageway from the street to enter a bookstore. We went into an old factory and performed a ritual with fire.
There’s something magical about exploring a city with fresh eyes. What happens when you wander through its streets, observing its history, hidden corners, and secrets? Recently, we did just that, collecting clues to create our own scavenger hunt. And that’s the format we’re exploring today!
📰 What’s the format?
A scavenger hunt. Scavenger hunts evolved from ancient folk games. They typically involve receiving a list of specific items from an organizer. The goal is to locate, collect, or complete the tasks on the list. A scavenger hunt forces you to pause and observe, to see the same things from different angles.
Exploring Antigua to create our own scavenger hunt allowed me to learn more about its colonial history, its artists, its churches and monuments, its quirks, and its secrets…
For the scavenger hunt we were designing, we planned:
Hiding a secret message in a book by a local author
Prompting participants to decipher the text written on a mysterious statue at the entrance of the city
Having participants walk to a nearby village to discover a factory that had been turned into a museum
Entering a small exotic shop with candles, herbs, ice cream, and magical little bottles in the style of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley.
A scavenger hunt is an opportunity to learn through the experience of exploration. Let’s dive into why this format is so powerful for learning.
💡 Why is it effective for learning?
According to Alice and David Kolb, learning happens in a cycle where we grasp an experience, reflect on it, conceptualize what we’ve learned, and actively experiment with new knowledge.
In a learning context, if we view scavenger hunts as “seek-and-find” exercises, it’s easy to dismiss them as a waste of time. However, when they are designed as concrete experiences where participants observe, reflect, and synthesize their learning, they become more engaging and impactful.
While everyday experiences can lead to some learning, they usually just reinforce what we already know or make small adjustments to our thinking and actions. Bigger changes in beliefs or behavior often need a surprising event that shakes up the usual routine. In other words, the experience needs to be out of the ordinary. There should be something unusual, unexpected, or unknown…
John Dewey emphasized that to trigger reflection and learning, this normal flow of experience must be interrupted by deep engagement, such as when we are ‘stuck’ with a problem or difficulty or ‘struck’ by the strangeness of something outside our usual experience. William James (1977) called this ‘pure experience.
An experience like a scavenger hunt is effective for several reasons:
Scavenger hunts create internal motivation, guiding participants to take ownership of their learning.
The collaborative nature of a group scavenger hunt fosters social interaction and collaboration.
Scavenger hunts build observational skills. They encourage curiosity and exploration of the world.
🎛️ What are the features?
This paper shares the experience of a business school class that used a scavenger hunt as a field-based experiential learning activity. They surveyed the students at the end of the experience and these were the main findings:
The scavenger hunt (1) Reinforced course concepts and objectives; (2) Increased understanding of course concepts through real-world examples; (3) Increased student engagement and motivation to learn; and (4) Increased awareness of the link between course concepts and real-world examples.
One key takeaway is to clearly and creatively link the learning material to real-world settings and guide learners through that observation process. Here are some other features from this format:
💌 An Invitation
Rob Walker, the author of The Art of Noticing, is an expert in, well, the art of noticing things. In his Substack, he writes about “Every Single X Missions” and a “Sensory Scavenger Hunt” (about discovering joy in the outside world). I really enjoy the prompts he shares for each of these projects. They are great starting questions if you’d like to create your own scavenger hunt.
For his “Visiting every public library in New Orleans” mission, he prepared and answered the following questions (I especially liked #7, #9, and #12):
Who was this library named after?
What does NearbyWiki have to say?
Any known geocaches to seek out? (more on this under Resources, below).
How was the actual library?
How about a bite?
Any plaques along the walk?
Notice anything that seemed out of place?
What else?
Any surprises?
Hear any birds?
Speaking of apps, what did Pokémon Go suggest?
Anything you had to make an effort to see?
What was the highlight?
For the Sensory Scavenger Hunt project, the main prompts were:
Find a visual that makes you happy
Find a scent that relaxes you
Find a sound that makes you smile
Find a texture that reminds you of a loved one who first comes to mind
Find a taste that reminds you of home
If you’d like to create your own scavenger hunt, choose locations or objects that fit the theme, design clues that encourage deeper thinking or observation, and guide participants through reflection on what they’ve learned…
🏷 Summary
Scavenger hunts as a learning tool: They encourage observation, exploration, and problem-solving, making them highly effective for experiential learning.
Key features: They help build problem-solving skills, are easy to customize, and promote teamwork and social interaction.
Why they matter for learning: When designed well, scavenger hunts engage participants through concrete experiences, prompting reflection and synthesis, which enhances learning.
How to create one: Design an experience that encourage deeper thinking or observation, and guide participants through reflection on what they’ve learned.
📚 Further Readings/References
Geocaching: Different from a scavenger hunt, geocaching is “a real-world treasure-hunting game”. Participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or mobile device to hide and seek containers, called geocaches or caches, at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world. I found my first geocache this summer in Maine (my friend RSM, shares a little bit about that here). It’s probably not too effective for learning, but it does make for some good mini adventures!
Questo: This is the app I’m exploring to build our scavenger hunt.
Thank you for reading! 💙
I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive ideas…) as well as your tips or suggestions for future editions. I’d love to hear about you in the comments.
→ Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.
This is so brilliant, Stefy. I love the prompts you suggested to help see deeper into the experience. I saw you suggested Questo. Also see Goosechase, their platform is so fun and the UI is seamless. Happy exploring!