Escape Room as a Tool for the Study of Special Needs in University Education

Introduction

In recent years, teaching innovation has experienced a great boost and acceleration at different educational levels. One of the reasons that has favored this impulse is the events experienced during the health crisis that we have been suffering in recent years. At the beginning of the pandemic, education had to quickly adapt to the circumstances and change traditional teaching methods for other new online ones that were adjusted to the situation that was being suffered (Scavarda, Dias, Reis, Silveira, & Santos, 2021; Tejedor 2021). Another of the factors that has propitiated this great impulse has been the technological change that it has produced in recent tears and of which we are participants. The use of technology enhances and helps the development of learning.

As Jenaro, Flores, Poy, González and Martínez (2013) state, in university teaching on many occasions, some strategies are abused, specifically exhibitions or master classes, debates, seminars, group work and the like. To correct this trend, before the start of the pandemic, the education system was trying to turn around by proposing new approaches to the skills and objectives that students must achieve (Tejedor, 2021). These new approaches should focus on “students acquiring skills and competencies during their studies that they can apply later in their personal and professional lives, for example, leadership skills, cooperation and teamwork, as opposed to memorization and repetition” (Area Moreira, 2008, p. 66-79). With the implementation of innovative methodologies in the classroom, we also want to facilitate student learning by proposing to relate motivation, learning and fun. To achieve these objectives, the new teaching methods raise the need to change the positions held by teachers and students in traditional methods. Teachers will not have to be the only protagonists in the teaching-learning process, but students have to become more involved and have a greater protagonism and a more active role in teaching (Strachan & Liyanage, 2015). The question that most professionals ask themselves is how can these goals be achieved?

To achieve these objectives, the new teaching methods, gamification, is proposed as a tool to arouse the interest and curiosity of students, attract their attention, improve their motivation, as well as facilitate their learning (Dicheva, Dichev, Agre, & Angelova, 2015). With gamification, it is intended that learning be different since it suggests that starting from a more motivating position, skills such as teamwork can be worked on, difficult to work with other methodologies, which will be required later from the students in the professional world.

Following this line, one of the alternative strategies to traditional teaching that can be applied in online higher education are the so-called Escape Rooms. The Escape Room is a dynamic and fun experience, born in the environment of online video games, which has reached the educational world, and due to its characteristics. it is making a niche in the world of education (Santamaría Urbieta & Alcalde Peñalver, 2019). Currently, the Escape Room is beginning to be used as new teaching dynamics that can motivate students more, promoting greater and better learning, and it can also be used to evaluate students' knowledge, as well as their abilities to work in teams and be competitive.

Believing in the educational potential of the application of Escape Rooms in online university classrooms, the objectives of this article are:

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  To increase students' participation.

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  To intensify the motivation of students towards learning the subject of General Developmental Disorders.

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  To promote student learning of the practical part of the subject of General Developmental Disorders.

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  To promote the development of student skills and competencies by using the escape room as a learning tool.

To achieve this objective, the theme and the tests to be passed in the Escape Room must be related to the curricular contents of the subjects covered in the Master's Degree in Special Education.