Everyone has heard of escape rooms once in their life. There are several escape rooms all around the world, and they are quite fashionable and well-liked. This is because playing the escape game offers players a distinctive and engaging experience. In an escape room, you and your team will be locked within a room, and your only chance of escaping is to figure out all the puzzles and riddles that have been placed inside. You need specific skills, like interaction, making decisions, and research ability, to solve the puzzles in the room. In order to find the hidden clues in an escape room, you must stick to a plot the entire time.
Each operator of an escape room guarantees a new and unique room design, whether it was made by yourself, purchased from someone else, or was based on an existing franchise, so you won’t discover the same theme in all of the rooms you attempt unless you retry the exact same section of the same escape room to win. Now, the topic can change based on the devices used in the escape room. A murder scene, a television show, a suspenseful tale, a novel, a laboratory lab, the near future or technology, a jail, a period of time, etc., may all be the inspiration for the piece. You must be expecting that these escape rooms may be utilized to teach kids as they offer so many advantages.
Now let us see if the educational escape rooms can be used to teach science-
Educational Escape
Researchers found that the aspects of the game that students liked the most were identical to what we all enjoy about escape rooms: deciphering codes, accessing vaults, and solving riddles. The majority of the students who responded when the researchers asked them what they learned and worked on in the escape room were teamwork, followed by learning or using their own judgment. Scientific learning was not a part of their feedback. However, this demonstrates that escape rooms increase students’ enthusiasm for working together to tackle complicated issues, which is a crucial talent to have in the scientific field and in everyday life overall and is tangentially linked to the goal of this research.
Science Education and the Possible Benefits of Escape Rooms
Researchers investigated the effects of educational escape rooms on seventh-graders’ scientific education in this 2021 study. In the study, an escape room with a biology theme and puzzles relating to diverse biological principles was utilized by 50 professors and 270 pupils. The study sought to determine the following issues:
Students and Teachers’ Experiences and review related to the escape room experience-
- Students’ response-
When students were questioned about their experiences after the escape room test. The researchers were expecting a positive response, and based on that, further analysis will be decided. The researchers found that students around 88 percent of the participants expressed satisfaction with their encounter, around 9 percent seemed indifferent, and around 3 percent expressed dissatisfaction.
- Teachers’ response-
Researchers also spoke with the teachers about what they noticed after the escape room experience. Teachers were asked about their opinion on what they believed drove the pupils’ interest in the escape room exercise. The researchers discovered that the majority of teachers believed that their pupils’ primary sources of motivation came from the thrill of winning the reward and the competition. The pupils’ genuine interests, which included problem-solving and teamwork training, are at odds with this.
Limitations and Obstacles to Learning from escape rooms
After gathering data from interviews, the analysts identified challenges that would make implementing escape rooms in teaching more difficult. One of the most in-
demand commodities in the realm of education are time. Most of the academics who participated in the survey believed that it would require a lot of time and preparation to set up and prepare the kids’ escape rooms. The pupils who do not learn enough in the classroom should choose another method of instruction and practical knowledge acquisition.
However, the study’s participant instructors believed that designing an escape room challenge that fit their curriculum would be too challenging.
Even said, the majority of the educators who were questioned acknowledged a willingness to employ educational escape rooms for science instruction despite the restrictions and challenges in education that were identified.
Efficiency in Reaching Learning Objectives
The study found that students who took part in the educational escape room challenge learned to pay attention to detail, developed critical thinking skills, and boosted their collaboration abilities compared to those who took conventional classes. The escape room is basically creating bridges to learning, especially in science-related topics. This shows that escape rooms provide the best learning environment for kids who are all studying science.
However, they felt that the escape room session had a greater emphasis on reviewing prior information than on teaching fresh ideas, despite the fact that the majority of instructors claimed that the escape rooms provided an excellent setting to learn all forms of education. Escape rooms that may be utilized to teach new material are more challenging to create.
Conclusion:
Participating in escape rooms improves crucial abilities, including focus, drive, and collaboration. A great approach to having fun while learning and developing is to participate in an escape room experience, whether it be outside of the classroom or within. Not only that, but the escape room is a brand-new notion for learning, so you should absolutely explore other new approaches as well. Since learning is unstoppable, learning strategies are also evolving.