Invigorating Virtual Classrooms in Degree and Post-Degree Studies of Economics With Escape Rooms

Introduction

The widespread use of mobile technology in the classroom has created new opportunities for teachers to adopt digital gamification (Magadán & Rivas, 2022a; Saleem et al., 2021). The use of games in educational contexts has a great reception by teachers because it intensifies the concentration of students, motivates them, involves them, and improves not only the learning experience but also grades (I. García, 2019; Licorish et al., 2018; Magadán & Rivas, 2022a; Robson et al., 2015).

Getting started in postgraduate courses in the area of Economics can be a complex process for university students, mainly because it involves developing different skills and competencies related to abstract thinking, analytical skills, case study, or calculation skills, among others. However, using escape rooms as virtual classroom gamification tools can ease and simplify this learning process.

From an educational perspective, educational escape rooms -due to their link with gamified structures- are tools belonging to the gamification methodology (Makri et al., 2021). Gamification in education gained popularity in the early 2010s (Kapp, 2012). It is a learning strategy that, by incorporating a ludic or game vision, increases the student's commitment to achieving better academic results (Dichev & Dicheva, 2017; Magadán & Rivas, 2022b; Sánchez et al., 2020), allowing them to develop curricular, cognitive and social skills (Manzano et al., 2021). The central idea of gamification leads to the logic that the motivational force of games can be transferred to educational contexts (Makri et al., 2021), requiring the student to have a proactive attitude to build their learning process (Parra et al., 2020). The inclusion of playful activities in the classroom improves participation, cooperation, creativity, and learning outcomes (Magadán & Rivas, 2021; Parra et al., 2020; Santamaría & Alcalde, 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). Its origin is playful and can be set in 2007 in Japan, although it has a rapid acceptance, first in Asia and then throughout Europe (Borrego et al., 2017).

Borrowing elements from role-playing games, scavenger hunts, movies, and TV shows, an escape room is a live-action game where players uncover clues, solve puzzles, and complete tasks within a limited time (Nicholson, 2018). Players may be called upon to solve a crime, save a fictional character, or find something. From a pedagogical point of view, the socio-constructivist approach (Vygotsky, 1978) is the base for escape rooms. Students build their knowledge through lived experiences in real-time, advancing through various challenges along the route map drawn in the escape room and facing a wide variety of problems of varying complexity until they reach the goal that can, in some cases, involve obtaining a previously established reward as an additional element of motivation.

The escape rooms must have a narrative that helps the participants understand their mission within it and generate concern and interest in the game (Connelly et al., 2018). When they rely on film references (series or movies), it is crucial to generate the same sensations and emotions that their protagonists’ experience and, at the same time, recreate and respect the original plots, which contributes to increasing the credibility and sense of immersion of the students. in experience (Navarro & Pérez, 2022). This type of approach increases motivation and generates a higher student's commitment to learning (Borrego et al., 2017; Morell et al., 2020), facilitating the assimilation of specific content in an active way (Navarro & Pérez, 2022; Parra et al., 2020).