GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, ND. -- In a combined effort, the newly organized 319th Reconnaissance Wing Integrated Resilience Office and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program unveiled their discovery room program, with an informal ceremony Oct. 11, 2023. The discovery rooms provide Airmen an interactive and innovative supplement to annual training requirements.
Discovery rooms are interactive spaces usually taking place in small, enclosed areas in which a team of individuals unravels a mystery or solves a puzzle to meet a specific goal or mission.
“Nothing is set in stone, but we have some ideas for supplementing our Airmen’s annual training with these discovery rooms,” said Carly Daniel, 319th RW SAPR coordinator. “PowerPoints will probably never go away, but an interactive training exercises can greatly increase the knowledge our Airmen retain.”
The program offers three different rooms featuring different mandatory training topics such as SAPR, suicide and violence prevention and equal opportunity.
During the opening ceremony Airmen were tasked with solving the themed mysteries within the rooms that involved following a paper trail, unlocking boxes with hidden combinations and piecing together fragments of the room’s story.
“Both younger and older military members have expectations for their training,” said Danae Grove, 319th RW IRO director. “They want to share more, they want to discuss more, they expect these trainings to be worth remembering.”
The IRO and SAPR offices hope the additional training tool will meet the expectations of Airmen of all ranks, providing a means of more open communication, more meaningful learning and above all, a hands-on experience that doesn’t include a PowerPoint presentation.
The discovery rooms are developed in a similar format to ‘escape rooms’ that are growing in popularity across the country to meet the interest of today’s Airmen. The IRO and SAPR teams took steps to ensure members who aren’t keen on enclosed spaces or the idea of needing to escape wouldn’t be offput from the activity.
“We felt it was important to change the name and even somewhat the style of these rooms,” said Daniel. “These subjects can be very sensitive for some, and we wanted to make sure our Airmen didn’t feel like they were stuck and had to escape. The doors will always be open if they need a breather, and the rooms are designed to be feel open and calming.”