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Escape Rooms as an Active Learning Didactic Strategy

comes in science education. Specifically, it addressed the following research
questions:

1. How do physical and virtual escape rooms affect students’ motivation
to learn about the digestive system?
2. How do students perceive their knowledge acquisition and engage-
ment in each type of escape room?
3. What are students’ attitudes towards collaboration and enjoyment in
both modalities?
4. Which elements of the escape room contribute most to a positive and
meaningful learning experience?

Methodology
This section is organized into five subchapters to provide a clear overview
of the research process: research design, sample and sampling, instruments,
procedure and data collection, and data analysis. An escape room can enrich
therangeofteachingmethods,whichiswhywehavecreated2escaperooms
for the same teaching content. One in physical form and one in virtual form,
which students can also solve outside the classroom. The results of the two
lessons carried out as escape rooms were compared in terms of the students’
motivation to learn, the success of the implementation and the popularity of
the respective escape room variant.
The learning content covered in the escape rooms corresponds to the
learning objectives of the content ‘Digestive system,’ which the students
learnt in the subject biology in 8th grade (Ministrstvo za šolstvo in šport
and Zavod Republike Slovenije za šolstvo, 2011). We carried out both ver-
sions of the escape room as revision lessons. The study employed a quasi-
experimental design, using two treatment conditions (physical and virtual
escape rooms) to compare students’ motivation, perceived knowledge, and
engagement. Both versions of the escape room included the same puzzles
and learning objectives but differed in their mode of implementation.
Afterthelesson,studentscompletedquestionnaire.Weanalyzedtheques-
tionnaire using statistical data analysis, to answer the research questions. We
used descriptive analysis and the Chi-square test to statistically analyze the
data.
We conducted a lesson with the escape room strategy in six 8th grade
classes, in four elementary schools, in Maribor, Slovenia. In the same class,
half of the students solved the escape room in physical form, and the other
half in virtual form. During the lessons, we observed the students’ responses

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