Escape rooms as an innovative language learning tool in higher education tourism degrees

Pires, A.; Pais, S.; Sousa, A. E.

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/8901

Use this identifier to reference this record.

Name:	Description:	Size:	Format:
Pires et al_2023_ Escape room_Edulearn.pdf		247.31 KB	Adobe PDF	Download

Send Feedback

Authors

Pires, A.

Pais, S.

Sousa, A. E.

Abstract(s)

We live in an ever-changing society. The educational context is no exception and requires a renewal of paradigms. Profound changes to the role and function of the professor and the students are particularly vital. Active, cooperative and participative learning methodologies must be privileged, breaking with magisterial education and the mere transmission of knowledge. The escape room is a game experience that challenges participants to leave a room where they are locked in. In order to reach the key to the exit door, players need to overcome a varied set of challenges. Following the increasingly recurrent adoption of gamification strategies in the teaching and learning processes, the educational escape room stems from this game experience and has students solving challenges in a team in real-time. In educational escape rooms, players/students discover clues and solve mysteries, fulfilling different tasks in a room to learn in an active way. Some of its benefits include improving student performance and motivation and fostering active learning. This paper presents a case study on educational escape rooms used in the German class with a group of first-year tourism students from a Portuguese higher education institution. Besides providing a motivating and challenging learning strategy, the aim of the escape room was to revise the content taught in classes. The study aims to evaluate how escape rooms can contribute to increasing students' motivation. A quantitative survey was conducted to gather information about students’ insights on the use of escape rooms.

Description

This work is financed by national funds by FCT Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the UID project UID/BP/04470/2020.

Keywords

Higher education Educational escape rooms Game-based learning, Soft skills Language learning Tourism

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/8901

Citation

Pires, A., Pais, S., & Sousa, A.E. (2023, July 3rd-5th). Escape rooms as an innovative language learning tool in higher education tourism degrees. Proceedings of EDULEARN23 Conference 3rd-5th July 2023, Palma, Mallorca, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21125/edulearn.2023.0448