What is an Educational Room Escape?

04 Jan What is an Educational Room Escape?

Increasingly, new recreational practices usually linked to the didactic field. The Educational Room Escape is one such practice, and although it is often perceived as a "fad", educationally oriented escapology games offer many advantages, particularly in facilitating learning.

Indeed, the escape games are becoming a innovative educational tool and, therefore, their incursion into schools lies in their effectiveness as an educational resource. The reason? Because students who take part in such adventures often leave the comfort zone of the classroom and test themselves as part of a group.

In this article we will go into more detail about what is the Educational Room Escape, what their benefits are and specify the underlying reasons for  schools to use this playful and didactic tool.

Educational Room Escape: Concept and advantages

The Educational Room Escape is a phenomenon that relies on gaming mechanisms to be used in the field of learning. And although the impact of this practice is still debated among education specialists, it aims to motivate and engage learners in a more fun and effective learning process.

This educational tool does not aim to pile up game mechanisms by adding purely didactic elements, but to choose playful components according to the educational contents and objectives. Moreover, it is expressed through four main pillars: emotions, limitations, relationships and the idea of progress.

The fact is that educationally oriented escape games are useful because:

• They encourage players to communicate and collaborate.
• They teach how to manage time and deadlines.
• They develop an aptitude for problem solving (a skill that is increasingly in demand in today's job market).
• It strengthens the learners' or participants' sense of observation.
• They promote communication and organisation within a group.
• They encourage the use of logic.
• They foster collective intelligence.
• They motivate students to learn in a fun way.
• They use an original format to review concepts or introduce new ones.
• They break with teaching routines.

Most schools in Spain that have included this practice in their classrooms have reported improvements and much enthusiasm from students. Not surprisingly, the Educational Room Escape stimulates knowledge, the desire for discovery and represents a way of testing the pupils' own skills. Not to mention, the basis of this type of play is to foster relationships and socialisation, essential points of any school environment.

Good reasons for introducing educational escape games in the classroom

The Escape Room is still a game, but when used for educational purposes, it acts as an innovative and effective teaching tool. In fact, if we evaluate in depth the reasons for introducing these experiences in the classroom, we find some truly amazing elements.

Here are some compelling reasons to promote the Educational Room Escape in schools:

• Because of its active aspect, its immersive character (puzzles, setting, scenery, lights, music, "special effects"...) and temporary recruitment, the escape game captivates students and invites them to concentrate on this activity.
• Solving riddles and puzzles helps to channel the attention and thinking of the learners and the group into a specific task or set of tasks, linked to the mobilisation and/or acquisition of knowledge or skills.
• The game offers a structuring of knowledge in different spaces or modules, while requiring several tasks to be performed in parallel. It also allows the brain to be used on several levels at the same time, through independent functions without causing fatigue.
• It promotes brain development, especially because it is based on our emotions and actions (behavioural approach) and because it is a dopamine vector. It therefore generates pleasure as well as addiction.
• It promotes certain learning by creating a context conducive to the acquisition of certain skills. Active engagement and motivation of the learner, two key processes for the acquisition of new skills and for learning, are maximised when participating in a play activity.
• The Educational Room Escape has the power to arouse curiosity in children and young people, a force that drives them to explore and generates the need to acquire new information. This means that entertainment is guaranteed because their attention is mobilised, making their minds search for an explanation. The role of teachers is to guide them.
• It is usually played in a group, like any escape game. In fact, studies confirm that students' motivation depends, to a large extent, on the social interactions they experience throughout their school life. Room Escape group work is therefore a lever for maintaining students' motivation to learn.

Conclusions

The Educational Room Escape is a means of getting learners to be active, which is especially important when the aim is to teach new skills. The fact that they also provide frequent feedback to learners is likely to contribute to their effectiveness.

There is no doubt, the educational escape game has been a great success in recent years in schools, both for teachers and students. Especially for the playful and immersive component intrinsic to this activity that manages to awaken the curiosity of students and facilitate the acquisition of learning both individually and as a group.