In addition to being a well-liked form of recreation, escape rooms have drawn the attention of educators due to their ability to foster teamwork, leadership, creative thinking, and communication in a way that is engaging for students. As a consequence, educational escape rooms are emerging as a new type of learning activity under the promise of enhancing students' learning through highly engaging experiences. These activities consist of escape rooms that incorporate course materials within their puzzles in such a way that students are required to master these materials in order to succeed. Although several studies have reported on the use of escape rooms in a wide range of disciplines, prior research falls short of addressing the use of educational escape rooms for teaching programming, one of the most valuable skills of the twenty-first century that students often have difficulties grasping. This paper reports on the use of an educational escape room in a programming course at a higher education institution and provide, for the first time, insights on the instructional effectiveness of using educational escape rooms for teaching programming. The results of this paper show that appropriate use of educational escape rooms can have significant positive impacts on student engagement and learning in programming courses. These results also suggest that students prefer these activities over traditional computer laboratory sessions. Finally, another novel contribution of this paper is a set of recommendations and proposals for educators in order to help them create effective educational escape rooms for teaching programming.

/pdf/examining-the-use-of-an-educational-escape-room-for-teaching-ekmey0958s.pdf

Examining the Use of an Educational Escape Room for Teaching Programming in a Higher Education Setting

An Escape Room as a Simulation Teaching Strategy

Escape education: A systematic review on escape rooms in education

This paper aims to present a systematic literature review on state-of-the-art Educational Escape Rooms (EERs) with the use of digital technologies. More specifically, the focus of the study is to present the current developments and trends concerning Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs) and investigate how they foster learning outcomes for online learners. Additionally, the present study provides insights into the design process of such technology enhanced EERs. This review is attributed to identifying and covering research gaps since the current literature has focused on the pedagogical aspects of Escape Rooms (ERs) in education, but no studies seem to have been conducted in regard to the pedagogical implications of Digital Escape Rooms (DERs) in educational environments. Based on the exhaustive literature review, an agenda for future research is promised and the implications for designing innovative ER approaches have been highlighted. The anatomy of the fundamental components of conducting systematic literature reviews was followed. The results of the review could be addressed to multidisciplinary teams related to education, game researchers, educational researchers, faculty members, scholars, instructors, and protagonists of educational systems to encourage them to thoroughly study the core elements of DEERs and how they can be applied in virtual educational contexts to facilitate students’ learning achievements.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4587/pdf

Digital Escape Rooms as Innovative Pedagogical Tools in Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Following the recent shift from traditional didactic classroom models to the adoption of active learning approaches, escape rooms and breakout games are increasingly being used in academia as a method for experiential, peer-group, game-based learning. Although they have the potential to enable new forms of teaching and transform the learning experience, escape rooms are a relatively new concept and there is not a substantial amount of work exploring their tendencies, affordances, and challenges on education. This paper addresses the lack of empirical evidence on the impact of escape rooms on educational settings by presenting a systematic review of 68 peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals and conference proceedings between 2009 and April 2019. To analyse and critically appraise the current state of knowledge and practice in educational escape rooms, it considers aspects such as fields of education, target audience, game type and location, time limit, team size, and study results. The systematic review also highlights the advantages and challenges of these new learning activities, as well as their positive impact on student motivation and soft skills development. The analysis indicates that educational escape rooms can provide an enjoyable experience that immerses students as active participants in the learning environment. Additionally, they give learners the opportunity to engage in an activity that rewards teamwork, creativity, decision-making, leadership, communication, and critical thinking. Although instructional design for educational escape rooms is complex and time consuming, once the game has been developed it can be further applied in successive years. The results of this work aim to lay the groundwork for educators and other stakeholders by offering new insights with effective advice and recommendations for the successful incorporation of escape rooms into their teaching strategies.

Escape Rooms for Learning: A Systematic Review

Background: Faculty are encouraged to use a variety of teaching/learning strategies to engage nursing students. While simulation and games are now common, there were no reports in the nursing literature using an “escape room” concept. Escape rooms use an entertainment approach as teams engage in critical thinking to solve puzzles and find clues to escape a room. In the classroom setting, this concept is modified to solve a mystery by finding various objects through a series of puzzles to locate clues. Some of these games involve finding numerical clues to open locks on a box, such as a toolbox. The purpose of this study was to describe the use of a toolbox gaming strategy based on an escape room concept to help students learn about cardiovascular medications in a pharmacology course. Methods: This pilot study employed a descriptive qualitative method to investigate an approach to pharmacology education. The sample consisted of first semester nursing students. Results: Student responses to criteria-based questions resulted in three themes: engaging, teamwork, and frustration, related to using a toolbox scenario strategy as a pathway to learning. Conclusions: This descriptive study yielded mixed results from the students who were frustrated by time constraints but engaged in the learning experience. Lessons are offered for future improvements.

/pdf/using-an-escape-room-toolbox-approach-to-enhance-4vdc2kyi6j.pdf

Robert H. Campbell

Papers

Using an “Escape Room” toolbox approach to enhance pharmacology education