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Escape Rooms for Learning: A Systematic Review

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Abstract

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
Panagiotis Fotaris1, Theodoros Mastoras2
1 School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK.
2 Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.
p.fotaris@brighton.ac.uk
mastoras@uom.edu.gr
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: escape room, breakout game, game-based learning, systematic review, gamification
1. Introduction
As ‘Digital Natives’, students of today think and process information differently, thus providing a challenge to
their teachers who often experience difficulties in keeping them motivated and engaged through conventional
taught learning. There is an acute need for educational innovations and ideas to make a meaningful impact on
the students’ educational experience (Serdyukov, 2017). Therefore, traditional education is giving way to the
use of approaches that have reportedly sustained high levels of motivation and engagement in the classroom,
such as integrating educational content within game-based context. Findings of independent experiments
performed in secondary and higher education settings showed that students who were subjects to learning with
video games reported significant improvements in subject understanding, diligence, and motivation (Fotaris et
al., 2016). Additionally, Barata et al. (2013) suggest that students who have taken part in a gamified learning
course have increased attendance rates, report higher levels of enjoyment and find learning more interesting.
Game-based learning (GBL) takes advantage of gaming technologies and techniques to create a fun, motivating,
and interactive virtual learning environment that promotes situated experiential learning. Unlike the one-size-
fits-all lectures, GBL can be balanced to suit the learners’ skill-level in order to prevent them from becoming
frustrated or bored and to allow them to experience flow, a state of optimal experience for learning
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Although GBL also comprises non-digital examples, an overwhelming proportion of
GBL research has been devoted to digital GBL, a field that aims at integrating educational elements into
computer games and/or digital simulations. While researchers have agreed on the potential of such solutions
for both instructional teaching and the exploration of new topics (Giang et al., 2018), most digital educational
games are individual and do not develop team building or group communication (Dietrich, 2018). Nevertheless,
research into the design, development, and evaluation of non-digital GBL applications still remains scarcer than
research surrounding their digital counterparts (Clarke et al., 2017). However, this trend is beginning to change,
mainly due to the rising popularity of escape rooms and their adoption in educational settings which allows to
implement more tangible and human-centred activities.
2. Background
Borrowing elements from point-and-click adventure games, live-action role-playing, interactive theatre,
treasure hunts, movies, and TV shows, an escape room is “a live-action team-based game where players discover
clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal (usually
escaping from the room) in a limited amount of time” (Nicholson 2015). Despite the name, it is not universal for
the theme to be escape-based. Players maybe called upon to solve a crime, save a fictional character or find
something. Escape rooms are one type of escape games, which are narrative-based challenges that use puzzles,
tasks, and a time limit. Other types include puzzlehunts, breakout boxes, escape books, Augmented/Virtual
Reality (AR/VR) escape rooms, or portable escape-rooms-in-a-box where most of the puzzles are contained in a
box so that players can have the same immersive and challenging experience in the comfort of their home.
Despite being a relatively new concept, escape rooms have become immensely popular in recent years. They
were firstly used in Japan in 2007 and grew rapidly in the last 5 years, exploding from 2,800 rooms throughout
the world in 2015 to over 7,200 in 2018 (Kroski, 2019). From a pedagogical point of view, escape rooms are
based on a social-constructivist approach (Vygotsky, 1978). Learners construct their own knowledge based on
real-time experiences of advancing through several challenges in the escape room; they are called to face new
and often complex problems, which can be solved by interacting with their peers and getting support from their
tutor. The latter can play the role of Game Designer, structuring the learning environment and/or the role of
Game Master, providing instructional scaffolding to the learners by facilitating the students’ interaction with the
material and with each other (Giang et al., 2018).
With that in mind, it may come as no surprise that escape rooms have begun to gain traction in academia.
However, it is not feasible or legal to lock a subset of a class in a room and wait until they puzzle their way out.
As a compromise, many escape rooms designed for the classroom have been stripped back to a group table-top
activity involving a series of locked boxes (Schaffhauser, 2017). While this type of activity loses the complete
immersion of a true escape room, it can still provide a motivating and educationally beneficial experience for
students when designed appropriately (Clarke et al., 2017). Academically focused escape-style scenarios were
popularised by Breakout EDU, an immersive learning games platform founded in 2015 that provides escape
room kits for instructors (Rouse, 2017). Educational institutions and libraries have started to integrate this
initiative into their programmes (Walsh and Spence, 2018) or to develop their own educational escape rooms
(López-Pernas et al., 2019). An educational escape room/game can be defined as an instructional method
requiring learners to participate in collaborative playful activities explicitly designed for domain knowledge
acquisition or skill development so that they can accomplish a specific goal (e.g., escape from a physical room or
break into a box) by solving puzzles linked to unambiguous learning objectives in a limited amount of time”.
Having a shared environment for players to work together on a game designed around specific learning
outcomes sets the groundwork for active learning.
3. Motivation and rationale for the study
The last 3 years have seen the development of an increasing number of educational escape rooms with satisfying
results, such as improved communication, collaboration, engagement, and student satisfaction (Friedrich et al.,
2018). However, due to their novelty, studies on empirical work or the educational significance of such activities
are still limited. Literature about their efficacy and usefulness as an educational tool appears to be very sparse
and a systematic review on educational escape rooms has yet to be published (Giang et al., 2018; Sanchez &
Plumettaz-Sieber, 2019). The present study addresses this issue by being the first systematic review that
performs a synthesis of the relevant research on educational escape rooms published from 2009 to April 2019
in order to identify and illustrate the opportunities they offer as an instructional tool. Within this context, the
research questions that guided this study were the following:
RQ1: What are the trends of educational escape rooms?
RQ2: What are the main characteristics of an educational escape room?
RQ3: What are the advantages and challenges of using escape rooms in educational settings?
4. Research methodology
The guidelines proposed by Kitchenham (2007) were adapted for the purposes of this systematic review using
the following steps: Planning; Conducting the review; and Reporting the review. Analysis of the results and the
discussion of findings, trends and conclusions regarding the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews
and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement recommendation (Moher et al., 2009).
4.1 Planning
This initial step was used to identify the most relevant literature to answer the research questions. For that
reason, we accomplished an iterative double check focused on peer-reviewed journals indexed in the Social
Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings indexed in the Conference
Proceedings Citation Index-Science (CPCI-S) database. The search process spanned from December 2018 to April
2019 and was conducted using electronic databases of authoritative academic resources and publishers,
including Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and ERIC. The inclusion and exclusion criteria
are presented in Table 1.
Escape rooms are sometimes known as escape games, room escape games, exit games, breakout games etc.
Currently there is no consensus on what to call this type of games, therefore the search keywords included terms
and variations for escape rooms in conjunction with terms for possible outcomes, impacts or effects of playing
escape games for learning. For example, a query used in Scopus is the following:
("room escape" OR "escape room*" OR "escape game*" OR "game escape" OR "breakout EDU" OR "breakout
game*" OR “breakout box” OR “exit game”) AND (learn* OR class* OR teach* OR train* OR educat*)
Finally, the following categories for analysis and data coding were defined to assist grouping of all relevant
studies based on their shared characteristics: target group; subject area; advantages/challenges of educational
escape rooms.
4.2 Conducting and reporting the review
After removing the duplicate records, the search procedure yielded 169 results. These articles were initially
screened based on their abstract; they were then carefully read by both authors to identify their suitability for
the study. The quality of the collected literature was subsequently assessed using the following rigorous
quantitative/qualitative rules (Pellas et al., 2018):
Appropriateness of the research methods and analysis of the study results;
In-depth illustration of the followed methodology;
Sufficient presentation of the findings;
Adequacy of the research questions;
Alignment of the study findings with the research questions.
Based on the combination of the above rules, 68 of the 169 retrieved articles were identified as relevant to the
purpose of this review and were selected for this study (Fig. 1). 46 of them were published in international
journals (67.6%) and 22 in conference proceedings (32.4%). The data extraction and data synthesis were carried
out by reading these 68 papers thoroughly; a data extraction spreadsheet was designed to store the following
elements: study name, year and type of publication, target audience, field of education, team size, location, time
limit, game type, theme, briefing, debriefing, research questions, evaluation methods, sample size, advantages,
challenges, and main findings.
Figure 1. Flowchart for the article selection process
Due to the diversity of the research methods used for instructional design, samples, and data collection, it was
not possible to undertake an accurate meta-analysis. However, the overall results were synthesised to extract
the main themes under which the findings of the review are identified and presented. To assess interrater
reliability with respect to the quality coding of the papers, all papers were coded independently by the two
authors. The interrater reliability (IRR) for the total scores was attained using Cohen’s kappa (Cohen, 1968); this
value was 0.91, showing good agreement between the two authors. Any disagreements were resolved by
consensus. The final stage included the analysis of the results and the discussion of findings that answered the
research questions of the study.
5. Results
5.1 Trends of educational escape rooms
Evolution over time: Of the 68 studies selected for the systematic review, 1 study was published in 2009 (1.5%),
3 in 2016 (4.4%), 15 in 2017 (22.1%), 25 in 2018 (36.8%), and 24 were published by the end of April 2019 (35.3%)
(Fig. 2). Assuming that the publication rate will remain the same throughout 2019, the projected number of
publications for 2019 should be around 72, which is almost three times the total number of publications for
2018. The search indicates that studies are being published at an increasing rate on a yearly basis with no signs
of slowing down. It is interesting to note that although the first paper on educational escape games was
published in 2009 (Hsu et al.), new articles on this topic were not published before 2016, which is around the
time escape rooms began to gain momentum in popularity as a social entertainment activity.
Fig. 2: Studies related to the application of escape rooms in education per year
Year
Number
of studies
Percentage (%)
2009
1
1.5%
0
0%
2016
3
4.4%
2017
15
22.1%
2018
25
36.8%
2019 (Jan - Apr)
24
35.3%
Target audience: The target audience for most studies was higher education students (72.1%), followed by
secondary (11.8%) and primary education students (7.3%), the general public (7.3%), and staff members (1.5%)
(Table 2). This can possibly be attributed to the fact that universities usually have better resources and more
research-focused staff compared to schools and are therefore more likely to lead the way in high quality
research. However, based on the eagerness with which schoolteachers have adopted escape rooms in their
classes as evidenced by the popularity of Breakout EDU (Rouse, 2017), these numbers may soon change.
Fields of education: To identify the domain of the educational escape rooms, our classification was based on the
broad fields of education proposed by the International Standard Classification of Education ISCED (UNESCO,
2013). Collected data in Table 3 show that most educational escape rooms cover subjects related to the broad
field of Health and welfare (29.4%), focusing on Nursing (Hermanns et al., 2017) and Medicine (Zhang et al.,
2019). Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics come second (22.1%), with Chemistry being the most
popular topic in this field (Peleg et al., 2019). 19.1% of the studies focused on Social sciences, journalism and
information, including several studies about Library orientation (Walsh and Spence, 2018), which is an emerging
topic for educational escape rooms. Information and Communication Technologies (14.7%) are represented by
escape rooms covering topics such as information literacy (Pun, 2017), programming (López-Pernas et al., 2019),
computer networks (Borego et al., 2017), and cryptography (Ho, 2018).
5.2 Main characteristics of educational escape rooms
Game type: Since their inception, escape rooms were created to exist in physical, digital, or mixed realities (i.e.,
a new environment in which physical and digital objects coexist). Mainly due to the relatively low cost of props
(e.g., locks, boxes, paper-based puzzles, etc.) and faster development time, 76.5% of the escape rooms in the
selected studies are physical, i.e., using only physical objects (e.g., Friedrich et al., 2018). 13.2% are hybrid,
offering both physical (e.g., locks, boxes etc.) and virtual objects (e.g., QR codes, social media platforms etc.)
that contained puzzle clues (e.g., Hermanns et al., 2017). Finally, 10.6% are digital games (e.g., Guo et al., 2017).
Although physical escape rooms are by far the most popular type of escape rooms, hybrid escape rooms using
AR/VR are expected to increase once these technologies become more mature.
Location: Results in Table 5 reveal that 78.9% of the escape games took place in the classroom or in a lab. From
a logistical point of view this might be a direct consequence of the space limitations often addressed in
educational institutions, which prevent an escape room from having its own dedicated and permanent space,
thus requiring the game to be portable or quick and easy to set up and take down (Sundsbø, K. 2019). Moreover,
when an escape game is played in the classroom students are not required to travel to a different location to
participate. Library buildings and hospital rooms are the second and third most common locations, respectively,
which correlates with the aforementioned findings about the popularity of escape rooms focusing on Library
orientation, Nursing, and Medicine. Other locations include a whole campus with puzzles being spread out over
several departments (Mac Gregor, 2018), a commercial escape room, and a factory building.
Time limit: 52 out of the 68 reviewed studies provided information about the escape room’s time limit. As shown
in Table 6, most participants had 15-120 minutes to complete the game, excluding any additional time spent for
briefing and debriefing activities. The only exceptions were a breakout game with no time limit (Bartlett and
Anderson, 2019) and an escape game running over the course of 3 weeks (Mac Gregor, 2018). 78.8% of the
escape rooms lasted one hour or less, which supports previous findings (López-Pernas et al., 2019). The majority
of studies (36.5%) used the 60-minute time limit typically found in commercial escape rooms, as this allows for
a sufficient number of puzzles to be used, offers ample time for students to work as a team, and fits into one
hour of instruction. In most of these cases escape room activities usually took place during two-hour sessions
that also allowed for briefing/debriefing sessions to be conducted. 30.8% of the reviewed escape rooms had a
time limit of 30-50 minutes and 11.5% lasted 20-25 minutes. These shorter time limits can be attributed to time
constraints; when the available time is restricted to one hour, games have to be shorter to include
briefing/debriefing sessions or to be reset if the activity has to be conducted in multiple time slots for large
groups (Walsh and Spence, 2018). Additionally, shorter games require less development time. Games lasting 75-
120 minutes were less frequent (17.3%) because besides the obvious logistical issues they can result in
student fatigue (Hsu et al., 2009). However, longer games can give tutors the opportunity to use more
meaningful challenges that require more time and effort to be solved (López-Pernas et al., 2019).
Team size: This refers to the number of participants in the escape room. Besides 5 studies about single-player
digital escape rooms (9.8%), team size in all other studies ranged from 2 to 14 players, with the exception of an
escape game ran in a campus that had no team size limitation (Mac Gregor, 2018). Results in Table 7 reveal that
most teams had 5 players (27.5%) or more. Compared to the average team size of 4.58 people for commercial
escape rooms (Nicholson, 2015), teams in educational escape rooms tend to be bigger. This is mainly due to
constraints imposed by classroom size, time, and facilities. Conducting an escape room activity with large
cohorts means that several sessions have to take place, which can be a logistical nightmare. As a result, team
size compromises often have to be made, which can affect student participation (Adams et al., 2018).
5.3 Advantages and challenges of using escape rooms in educational environments
All 68 studies reported at least one advantage, but the majority of them listed more. As expected, educational
escape rooms were found to promote teamwork and collaboration (41.2%) (Ho, 2018), as well as produce high
levels of enjoyment (38.3%) (Peleg et al., 2019) and engagement (32.4%) (Zhang et al., 2019). Students reported
learning gain (30.9%) (Walsh and Spence, 2018) and increased motivation (29.4%) as they found learning
through play more interesting. Another common advantage was social interaction and communication (27.9%);
the escape room activity reinforced and strengthened social relationships, which helped establish a sense of
belonging. Improved analytical skills such as critical thinking (Adams et al., 2018), problem-solving (16.2%) and
creativity (Foster and Warwick, 2018) (10.3%) were also signalled as a major advantage (16.2%), while natural
leadership behaviours have reportedly emerged in several studies (10.3%). Finally, the results show that escape
rooms can be reused several times with different groups (10.3%) and provide a supplemental method for
reviewing material (10.3%) (Kinio et al., 2017).
48 of the selected studies (70.6%) reported some challenges when using escape rooms in educational settings.
The most reported challenge refers to poor evaluation (33.8%); the majority of studies lacked a control group
and resorted to surveys addressing the students’ perception of the escape room and how it impacted their
learning of the concept. This could produce biased results as it was sometimes difficult to obtain a sufficient
number of responses. Even in cases where experimental design or pre-post tests were used the results could
not lead to safe conclusions due to small sample sizes. Time commitment was also an issue (25%), as the
intellectual and physical labour involved in the creation of an escape room make it a labour-intensive and high
resource process that may not appeal to many educators. Other reported challenges include small sample sizes
(20.6%) and limited resources such as room or facilitator availability (14.7%). Due to time constraints, poor
design, or limited playtesting, occasionally games had unbalanced difficulty (11.8%) and felt too short/too long
(10.3%). Involving students in the game creation to ensure age- and developmentally-appropriate puzzles could
address this problem. Timing issues were also reported (8.8%); having a few minutes to set the game when
running events to tight schedules was often stressful for staff. Although educational escape rooms can be cheap
to build, budget limitations were still reported (7.4%). Finally, large group sizes presented logistical challenges,
as it was difficult for instructors to conduct the activity in multiple time slots or for participants to deeply engage
with the tasks (5.9%).
6. Discussion and conclusion
This work presents a systematic literature review of 68 studies focused on educational escape rooms. Results
seem to indicate that escape rooms are innovative, active, collaborative and constructivist instructional
approaches that can shape learning more powerfully than conventional teaching. They help learners understand
the value of seeing problems from different perspectives, expose them to collaborative teamwork, promote
engagement and persistence on task, strengthen social relationships, activate team spirit, and facilitate benefits
of deep learning through group discussion.
The need for participants to work together to succeed in a time-pressured but fun environment allows students
to develop communication skills; it can also reduce the “free-rider” problem (i.e., students who reap the benefits
of, but do not contribute to, the group’s work), which is one of the common complaints among both instructors
and students regarding traditional group-based learning activities. Additionally, escape rooms provide a
platform for bringing technology to the classroom, as websites, videos, or other interactive digital material can
easily be incorporated into the various puzzle of the escape activity.
Creating puzzles that address the learning objectives and force students to engage with the material instead of
just searching for clues requires time and thought. Once the game has been developed though, it can be used
repeatedly in successive years. Any implementations of educational escape rooms should include pilot testing
in order to estimate the time required to complete the game and to identify any errors that could prevent
successful completion.
Throughout the studentsparticipation in the escape room, the debriefing stage is their only opportunity for
reflection; without reflection, experience cannot lead to long-term learning. Surprisingly, only 27 (39.7%) of the
reported studies included debriefing in their escape room experience and only 15 (22.1%) provided details of its
implementation. Further studies incorporating debriefing and with more rigorous evaluation are needed to
confirm the educational value for different designs, different types of content, and in different settings.
Additional research is also necessary to begin to gauge the “return of investment” of time and resources in
relation to the achieved outcomes.
In conclusion, the present review intends to contribute to instructional education design by providing evidence
of escape rooms’ potential to support teaching and learning across different disciplines. The results may extend
the road map for further research, offer new insights to researchers, and provide educators with effective advice
and suggestions on how to incorporate escape rooms into their practice.
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... Educational escape rooms show promise as an innovative and captivating approach to supporting active learning. Numerous studies indicate that well-designed escape rooms can enhance pupils' motivation and improve their enthusiasm for learning (Fotaris & Mastoras, 2019;Fotaris & Mastoras, 2022;Manzano-León et al., 2021;Taraldsen et al., 2022;Veldkamp et al., 2020;Videnovik et al., 2022). Fotaris and Mastoras (2019) emphasize that educational escape rooms offer an enjoyable experience, engaging pupils as active participants in the learning process. ...
... Numerous studies indicate that well-designed escape rooms can enhance pupils' motivation and improve their enthusiasm for learning (Fotaris & Mastoras, 2019;Fotaris & Mastoras, 2022;Manzano-León et al., 2021;Taraldsen et al., 2022;Veldkamp et al., 2020;Videnovik et al., 2022). Fotaris and Mastoras (2019) emphasize that educational escape rooms offer an enjoyable experience, engaging pupils as active participants in the learning process. By solving challenges within these rooms, learners gain insights into problem-solving from diverse perspectives, engage in collaborative teamwork, and develop social connections, all contributing to their educational experience. ...
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Educational escape rooms represent an innovative and engaging educational approach, with a high potential for the development of problem-solving and collaboration skills. That is why it is important to familiarize teachers with them and support them for their use in the teaching practice. Our paper presents a case study investigating the utilization of two versions of digital educational escape rooms (DEERs) within the lifelong training of mathematics teachers. Thirty-two mathematics educators of pupils aged 10 to 19 participated in the research. DEERs were developed in two digital platforms: Room Escape Maker and Google Forms, offering an interactive adventure game and a story-based text game, respectively. The study aimed to explore teachers' perceptions of these DEER versions and their potential applications in teaching. Data collection employed observation and a questionnaire survey, followed by qualitative evaluation through thematic analysis. The research's limitations include the sample size and the specifications of the utilized DEERs.
... • Alternate realities explicitly make use of narratives to create spaces in which the real world and imagined other worlds overlap and are relatively new in higher education. This includes alternate reality games in which players collaboratively solve puzzles over weeks or months, other pervasive games (Montola, Stenros and Waern, 2009) that blend real and fictional worlds including street games and treasure hunts, and escape rooms (Fotaris and Mastoras, 2019) in which learners must work in small groups to solve puzzles. ...
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In this paper we provide an original theoretical framework for conceptualising the relationship between play, games, and playfulness. This framework is intended to support in understanding the different potential benefits and drawbacks of the use of games and playful approaches in universities. To evidence its significance across the sector, we apply the framework to seven different forms of play pedagogy used in Higher Education. First, we define and differentiate between games as problem-solving systems and playfulness as an engagement philosophy. We highlight the advantages of games as experiential learning environments and as intrinsically engaging tools, and the benefits of playfulness for promoting lusory attitudes within ludic communities. We argue that play – encompassing both an activity form and state of mind – can be conceived as the nexus of games and playfulness, bringing the affordances of both as well as additional synergistic benefits relating to the normalisation of failure. Second, we present a taxonomy of seven forms of playful learning in higher education that emerged from a large-scale literature review of the use of play in higher education over the past fifty years. These are: roleplay, simulations, traditional play, play worlds, ludification, playmaking, and alternate realities. This taxonomy is then tested against the literature base to provide a suite of examples of different ways in which playful learning encompass games and playfulness. We conclude by discussing the limitations and potential uses of this approach when applied to the practice of play as a pedagogy.
... Educational escape rooms are currently one of the most studied pedagogical tools developed in the field of Game-Based Learning, and their application in environmental education is promising. Fotaris and Mastoras [38] emphasize the growing popularity of escape rooms in educational contexts, which is reflected in the increasing scientific attention [36]. Their digital implementation (Digital Escape Rooms, DERs) has become even more attractive since the pandemic [37]. ...
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Today’s adolescents represent an elective target in addressing environmental challenges. Education is a key factor in achieving a sustainable future for them. However, formal education can represent a challenge when youths are its target, as they are considered the “interactive generation”. Game-based learning, and, in particular, Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DERs), have emerged as innovative methods in education, with promising applications in environmental sustainability studies. In this study, we developed 14 Digital Escape Rooms using the Social Cognitive Theory of Bandura as a theoretical framework. These were focused on environmental education and we tested them on a sample of 411 students (aged 12–18 years; 158 female, 38.4%). A one-group quasi-experimental research design was adopted, carrying out a pre-test post-test analysis. Each participant completed assessments at two time points: before engaging in the escape rooms (T0) and after (T1). The assessment tools included the Goal Assessment Scale (GAS) and the Perceived Climate Self-Efficacy Scale. Our findings revealed no significant gender differences in goal achievement. However, at T0, females exhibited higher levels of perceived climate self-efficacy in both individual and collective dimensions. Instead, the Digital Escape Rooms appeared particularly effective in increasing self-efficacy among male participants. These results suggest that Digital Escape Rooms hold potential for enhancing environmental self-efficacy, although gender differences in baseline efficacy levels warrant further exploration.
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Research has shown that educational escape rooms (EERs) motivate and engage learners in the learning process, mainly due to the incorporation of game elements into their educational context. As a result, various frameworks have been proposed to design and develop EERs over the past few years. However, these frameworks fail to highlight the important "D"-digital factor of technology which transforms EERs into Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs), as well as the smart pedagogy (SmP), which in turn goes beyond game-based approaches and is currently essential for the design and the development of well-orchestrated and reusable smart learning solutions. Due to the fact that technology increases motivation, this study introduces the work-in-progress framework D-EER4SmL, primarily based on John Keller's theory of ARCS and the 10-step systematic design process for the development of motivational e-courses, tailored to learners' preferences. The framework was aligned with various EER design principles, along with Smart Pedagogical (SmP) approaches, which could be facilitated by web technologies in order to design and develop DEERs as e-courses. To confirm the motivational aspect of smart learning and the assumption that digital technology provides additional motivation, a DEER e-course was developed, based on this framework. The DEER e-course was delivered to ICT students - future ICT teachers/e-learning educators - who would be trained in instructional/e-learning design utilizing web technologies. A total of 108 higher education students of digital systems voluntarily participated in the workflows of the DEER e-course, played the game, and evaluated motivational affordances (MAs), after completing it. Quantitative data analysis was conducted, based on an improvised questionnaire for DEERs, aligned with Keller’s Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). As far as motivation is concerned, the framework was proven effective in the initial research findings; however, further research is needed to confirm its effectiveness within the wider context of smart learning.
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An “escape room” style game was developed as an induction activity for first year psychology students, encouraged by the need for icebreakers that meet specific, relevant and transparent learning outcomes. The game concept was designed using the escapeED framework for game-based-learning (Clarke et al., 2017), including consideration of narrative, participants, theme, objectives and evaluation. Groups of up to six students worked on an iPad “board” that had clickable objects on a representation of a lecturer’s desk. Students had 20 minutes to solve four puzzles that identified objects to click on and reveal digits for a padlocked bag. However, clicking the wrong objects would cause loud music that would “disrupt the staff office”. The four puzzles symbolised learning outcomes that students will develop throughout their course, such as seeking and evaluating evidence, using maths, and referencing. The puzzles also used staff profiles to promote discussion about psychology research, prompt the development of supportive networks and relationships with staff. A realistic calendar puzzle highlighted the social and academic opportunities that students should engage in as part of the psychology community, which they could also identify as by wearing the pin badge they unlocked on completion of the game. Psychology staff facilitated reflection on icebreaker activities, including themes of teamwork and leadership roles, asking for help, and learning and adapting from mistakes. A thematic analysis of three focus groups later highlighted that students resist looking at assignment feedback and are concerned about wasting staff time in office hours. This led to recruitment of senior students to facilitate the escape room, and changes in our reflective practice tutoring to address issues raised during the game. Overall, students reported a sense of fun and competition from the activities and felt better prepared for learning after the introduction to psychology skills during induction.
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This research investigates the effectiveness of a cybersecurity escape room as an educational intervention to increase awareness of cybersecurity risks towards a safer work environment. The escape room aims to educate participants and cybersecurity and to make them more resilient against various cyberthreats. Method: To validate the effectiveness, a pre-test-post-test design with 96 participants was conducted, 42 also completing a delayed post-test and 29 participants served as a control group. All participants were healthcare professionals. Using the HAIS-Q, six themes were investigated (namely email usage, passwords, ransomware, social engineering, incident reporting, and software updates) using the three constructs from the Knowledge, Attitude and Behaviour model. Results: The escape room had an overall immediate positive effect on participants (t(95) = -6.259, p < 0.001), and this effect persisted after 1 month (t(25) = -2.946, p = .006). Zooming in on individual themes, the immediate scores improved for email usage, passwords, social engineering and software updates, whereas the delayed scores improved specifically for email usage and passwords. Conclusion: The results show that the cybersecurity escape room may be a promising way to enable employees to resist cybersecurity threats. Nonetheless, the results need to be interpreted with caution. The research design experienced some dropout, meaning that results could differ with increased participation. Furthermore, it is not entirely evident which aspects of the escape room caused the observed effect; this is subject to future research.
Conference Paper
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Research has shown that educational escape rooms (EERs) motivate and engage learners in the learning process, mainly due to the incorporation of game elements into their educational context. As a result, various frameworks have been proposed to design and develop EERs over the past few years. However, these frameworks fail to highlight the important "D"-digital factor of technology which transforms EERs into Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs), as well as the smart pedagogy (SmP), which in turn goes beyond game-based approaches and is currently essential for the design and the development of well-orchestrated and reusable smart learning solutions. Due to the fact that technology increases motivation, this study introduces the work-in-progress framework D-EER4SmL, primarily based on John Keller's theory of ARCS and the 10-step systematic design process for the development of motivational e-courses, tailored to learners' preferences. The framework was aligned with various EER design principles, along with Smart Pedagogical (SmP) approaches, which could be facilitated by web technologies in order to design and develop DEERs as e-courses. To confirm the motivational aspect of smart learning and the assumption that digital technology provides additional motivation, a DEER e-course was developed, based on this framework. The DEER e-course was delivered to ICT students-future ICT teachers/e-learning educators-who would be trained in instructional/e-learning design utilizing web technologies. A total of 108 higher education students of digital systems voluntarily participated in the workflows of the DEER e-course, played the game, and evaluated motivational affordances (MAs), after completing it. Quantitative data analysis was conducted, based on an improvised questionnaire for DEERs, aligned with Keller's Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). As far as motivation is concerned, the framework was proven effective in the initial research findings; however, further research is needed to confirm its effectiveness within the wider context of smart learning.
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Reading is a fundamental skill, fostering autonomy. However, research on teaching reading to pupils with intellectual disabilitiesis limited, with few detailed programs available. This study illuminates the development process of a novel learning tool: escape boxes, designed to enhance reading instruction for pupils with intellectual disabilities. Escape boxes are adaptable and accessible versions of traditional escape rooms. Eleven pupils aged 10-16 with intellectual disabilities, along with 11 classroom teachers and two experts (one specializing in teaching reading to pupils with intellectual disabilities, the other in educational design) participated in this research. A design-based research approach was employed, combining research design with activities in the natural learning environment. This method effectively integrates practical classroom application with theoretical underpinnings. Findings indicate that the escape boxes designed for the participating pupils were tailored to individual needs and stimulated learning motivation. Teachers' suggestions during the design process led to differentiated activities for each pupil. The experts highlighted the potential of offering students choices during gameplay, fostering a sense of independence—an unexpected yet valuable outcome. Moreover, the study underscores the need for teachers to be familiar with language simplification techniques when teaching reading to pupils with intellectual disabilities. This research can serve as a model for reading teachers to develop innovative instructional tools. Additionally, the paper provides recommendations for teacher training in reading instruction. https://mop.levinsky.ac.il/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/09/Issue5Article3-.pdf
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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 provides, for the first time, insights on the instructional effectiveness of using educational escape rooms for teaching programming. The results of this work 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.
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Open access (OA) has had, and will continue to have, a significant effect on the scholarly publishing landscape in academia, yet many academic staff publish OA in order to comply with policies, rather than engaging with the value of open scholarship and in debates that ultimately affect them. Training sessions and workshops are often arranged to increase knowledge and awareness in the academic community, but engagement is often low. On the other hand, some academic staff, who already do engage, will happily attend sessions and workshops to increase their knowledge even further. The struggle to increase OA engagement overall could be due to the training not being appealing enough, and academics not being aware of benefits until after they have attended workshops. At the University of Essex, we took a bold, brave and curious approach to increasing engagement during Open Access Week 2018, and created an OA-themed escape room. This resulted in great engagement from students, academic staff and professional services staff, some of whom reported that they never knew how relevant OA was for them. The Open Access Escape Room was a success, and provided a positive environment for conversations around OA.
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Medical errors are the eighth leading cause of mortality in the United States and contribute to over one million preventable injuries. In an effort to prevent medical errors, reporting systems serve as invaluable tools to detect patient safety events and quality problems longitudinally. Historically, trainees (i.e., students and residents) rarely submit incident reports for encountered patient safety threats. The authors propose an immersive learning experience utilizing gamification theory and leveraging the increasingly popular ‘escape room’ to help resident trainees identify reportable patient safety priorities. All 130 incoming intern physicians at the Thomas Jefferson University (Jefferson) were enrolled in the Patient Safety Escape Room study as part of their residency orientation (June 2018). The residents were randomly divided into 16 teams. Each team was immersed in a simulated escape room, tasked with identifying a predetermined set of serious patient safety hazards, and successfully manually entering them into the Jefferson Event Reporting System within the time allotted to successfully ‘win the game’ by ‘escaping the room’. Quick response (QR) codes were planted throughout the activity to provide in-game instructions; clues to solve the puzzle; and key information about patient safety priorities at Jefferson. All participants underwent a formal debriefing using the feedback capture grid method and completed a voluntary post-study survey, adapted from Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ). The study was IRB exempt. Thematic analysis of the post-activity CIQ survey (n = 102) revealed that interns were engaged during the immersive learning experience (n = 42) and were specifically engaged by having to independently identify patient safety threats (n = 30). Participants identified team role assignment (n = 52) and effective communication (n = 26) as the two most helpful actions needed to successfully complete the activity. Participants were overall surprised by the success of the education innovation (n = 45) and reported that it changed how they viewed patient safety threats. Areas for improvement include clearer game instructions and using a more streamlined event reporting process. The escape room patient-safety activity allowed interns to actively engage in an innovative orientation activity that highlighted the importance of patient safety hazards, as well as providing them with the opportunity to document event reports in real-time. Next steps will include longitudinally tracking the quantity of error reports entered by this cohort to determine the effectiveness of this educational intervention.
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Escape rooms have become very popular with the public in the past few years. Outside of the for-profit sector many grade schools and public libraries have used them to teach and entertain. This article shows how an academic library was able to successfully use the popularity of escape rooms and their teaching advantages to create an escape experience for students. By creating an experience that remained true to the original purpose of escape rooms, but which spanned the whole campus rather than one room, players learned about the library and other campus services by solving a series of ciphers and riddles.
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Escape rooms are an increasingly popular puzzle game, and educators have started implementing them in classrooms. This paper will describe the motivations and implementation of escape-room-like puzzles in an undergraduate cryptography course, including how the open-source mathematics software system SageMath is used. In addition, there is a discussion about generalizations of the activity to other courses.
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There is growing evidence that incorporating games into education supports active learning and student participation. With that in mind, we created a staff development session that involved a playful learning activity, in which attendees experienced 90’s nostalgia, whilst working on an important learning and teaching issue.Based on the British game show, The Crystal Maze, The ‘Crys-TEL’ maze required attendees to complete a number of challenges as a group to attempt to ‘solve’ a pressing learning and teaching issue. Using gamification techniques, defined as game design elements in non-game settings, attendees experienced different delivery styles, whilst always working towards the learning and teaching issue they had been asked to consider. In a nod to the original Crystal Maze game show, attendees worked in groups to score points for completing various tasks. The two groups with the most points competed against each other in the final to collect crystals, and ultimately conquer the ‘maze’.This article will describe the journey we took from the initial concept through to the delivery of the session, and our reflections and proposed future developments of the Crys-TEL Maze.
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Imagine being locked in a chemical lab with 4 "bombs" that will detonate within 60 min unless you neutralize them. You now must use your brain, chemical knowledge, intuition, and need a bit of luck to neutralize the bombs and escape unharmed... This is the concept behind "chemical escape", an activity for high-school students, which brings the extremely popular genre of "escape rooms" into the chemistry classroom; it engages students in learning, increases motivation, and bridges the gap between classroom chemistry and the real world, as well as allows for teamwork and peer learning. A mobile escape room was designed and built in Israel; it consisted of lab-based activities and was suitable for high schools. To date, the activity has been introduced to more than 350 chemistry teachers who then implemented it to over 1500 students. An evaluation questionnaire was developed on the basis of students' statements of their experience of the escape room (bottom-up); the results indicate that the students were highly engaged and motivated during the activity, and there was an appreciation for teachers' efforts to run the escape room, an increased feeling of efficacy, and effective teamwork. In this paper we provide a detailed description of all the puzzles and an explanation of how to operate it in a school lab. © Copyright 2019 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Article
Escape ClassRoom "CSI 1.0" is an educational escape room proposed as an interactive analytical chemistry exercise for the evaluation of undergraduate students at the end of the subject. This approach is a new form of live action learning activity in which the students have to solve an analytical problem, namely, "an alleged crime". From this initial hypothesis, they have to investigate the crime by playing the role of trainee forensic chemists. As in any escape room, Escape ClassRoom "CSI 1.0" is a logical game in which the main objective is to discover several clues, to find hidden objects, and to solve a mystery in order to escape a "locked" room in an established time. The students play the role of forensic scientists and solve the alleged crime by following the scientific method in order to escape. To do so, they have to apply the whole analytical process from beginning to end, i.e., from a correct sampling at the crime scene, through the analysis of sample and data treatment until the interpretation of the results to validate the initial hypothesis: a murder has been committed. If it has, then who did it? The students' knowledge in analytical chemistry and the teamwork are the only tools that they have to solve all of the riddles and uncover hidden messages to "win" while time is running out. This first experience showed the potential of an escape room to be used as an innovative educational tool easily applicable to other subjects. © 2019 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Chapter
In the past years, educational escape games have raised interest in researchers and educators as a new game-based learning approach to break out from the traditional classroom routine. Recent work has demonstrated that educational escape games elicit high motivation and engagement on the part of the participants. Moreover, it has been shown that many participants experienced flow, a state of mind, which has been considered as beneficial for successful learning. However, due to its novelty, studies on the educational significance of such activities still appear to be sparse. In this work, we investigated whether escape games can be used as a teaching tool in the context of educational robotics, since both can be situated in the pedagogical currents of social-constructivism. To this end, we developed a prototype of an escape game using the educational robot Thymio and the visual programming language VPL and tested it with 61 subjects. Both quantitative and qualitative results showed that most participants highly appreciated the activity and agreed on the game’s usability for teaching. Moreover, a great majority agreed on having experienced flow while playing. We, therefore, suggest that escape games provide a favorable framework for educational robotic activities, promoting particularly self-regulated and collaborative learning.
Article
Communication skills among healthcare professionals are a necessary component in ensuring quality outcomes for patients. This report describes the design and curricular implementation of an interprofessional escape room, an innovative way to promote communication and positive team dynamics among students. In this interactive, serious game, teams of approximately eight interprofessional participants were provided with a fictitious patient case in a simulated hospital environment. Within a 45-minute time limit, students needed to use objects in the room to solve a series of puzzles to successfully complete the room by addressing all the patient’s needs. A facilitated debrief following the activity allowed participants to reflect on their communication skills and teamwork during the experience. A total of thirty students across seven professions piloted the activity, and 181 students across five professions participated in the activity as part of an academic course. Feedback from students was collected on a seven-point Likert scale and revealed the value of an interprofessional escape room in academia. This report, which describes what appears to be the first interprofessional health care escape room within an IPE curriculum, demonstrates the value of the escape room in encouraging teamwork, facilitating communication, and promoting interprofessionalism.