Page 101 - Razvoj kompetenc prihodnosti v pedagoških študijskih programih

Escape Rooms as an Active Learning Didactic Strategy

et al. 2023). When students actively acquire knowledge during the learning
process rather than passively, learning outcomes tend to be more sustain-
able. Moreover, students can more easily apply what they have learned to
new contexts and challenges (Rutar Ilc, 2003).
For the student, active learning is no longer just about memorizing infor-
mation but about creating meaningful interactions between participants in
the learning process, changing the student’s ideas about the world and mak-
ing new connections between different knowledge and skills.
Learning strategies based on educational games are becoming increas-
ingly popular in education, partly because of their social aspect, which
encourages collaboration between students (Vidergor, 2021). Cooperative
learning is a form of active learning, in which the teacher encourages not
only the development of content knowledge, but also social skills and in-
teractions among students (Davidson & Major, 2024). In cooperative learn-
ing environments, students formulate questions, discuss ideas, explore so-
lutions, and perform tasks together (Kozlov & Große, 2016; Veldkamp et al.,
2020). Cooperative learning requires the participation of all group members,
and everyone is responsible for solving all parts of a problem. By using co-
operative learning, all students in the group expand their knowledge of the
entire problem. The goal of collaborative learning is to enable students to
construct knowledge together through social interactions (Davidson & Ma-
jor, 2024).
Students who are engaged in collaborative learning consistently outper-
form peers who learn in isolation, showing improvements in conceptual un-
derstanding, social interaction, and motivation (Cabrera & Cabrera, 2002;
Davidson & Major, 2024). Given these benefits, escape rooms can serve as
a dynamic pedagogical tool that integrates collaboration, critical thinking,
and gamified engagement.
Despite numerous studies on active and game-based learning, few have
compared the impact of physical and virtual escape rooms on students’ mo-
tivation and knowledge retention at the primary level. This study aims to ad-
dress this research gap by comparing both approaches and examining the
motivational and cognitive factors underlying their effectiveness.

Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework begins by defining the escape room as a didactic
strategy that supports active learning. In educational contexts, an escape
room is a structured, game-based learning environment where students
collaboratively solve puzzles and tasks to achieve a clearly defined goal. As

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