Exploring Escape Games as a Teaching Tool in Educational Robotics

Abstract

In the past years, educational escape games have raised interest in re- searchers and educators as a new game-based learning approach to break out from the traditional classroom routine. Recent work has demonstrated that educational escape games elicit high motivation and engagement on the part of the partici- pants. Moreover, it has been shown that many participants experienced flow, a state of mind, which has been considered as beneficial for successful learning. However, due to its novelty, studies on the educational significance of such ac- tivities still appear to be sparse. In this work, we investigated how escape games can be used as a teaching tool in the context of educational robotics, since they can be both situated in the pedagogical currents of social-constructivism. We de- veloped a prototype of an escape game using the educational robot Thymio and the visual programming language VPL and tested it with 61 subjects. Both quan- titative and qualitative results showed that most participants highly appreciated the activity and agreed on the game’s usability for teaching. Moreover, a great majority agreed on having experienced flow while playing. We, therefore, sug- gest that escape games provide a favorable framework for educational robotic activities, fostering particularly self-regulated and collaborative learning.