Educational Escape Rooms as a Tool for Horizontal Mathematization: Learning Process Evidence (original) (raw)

Chapter 12 - ESCAPE ROOM IN EDUCATION: GAMIFY LEARNING TO ENGAGE STUDENTS AND LEARN MATHS AND LANGUAGES

Experiences and perceptions of pedagogical practices with Games, 2019

Education continues to look for models to enrich the learning and teaching processes. The Educational Escape Room is a growing trend in today’s schools. It is an innovative strategy to increase motivation among students and stimulate collaborative work among teachers. Simultaneously, teachers can use games (serious games) as a learning tool to facilitate students’ engagement. It enables students to actively learn, play, interpret and solve problems. It also helps to improve intellectual, creative and logical-deductive thinking skills, involving them actively in their curricular learning. Our aim is to present two examples of how to take advantage of this strategy in Portuguese and Maths classes. The first one was developed with Professional Education students of the 11th grade and was integrated into the activities of the Portuguese classes; and the second involved the subjects of Portuguese and Maths as an interdisciplinary methodology, as well as a Writing Workshop, and it was held in the School Library. The initial challenge was presented to the 7th grade students and consisted in creating different narratives that, after a selection, conferred the Educational Escape Rooms its theme. The students used their smartphones and the tablets of the school to solve the challenges (clues, puzzles, problems, mysteries and riddles, etc.). The collected data in this work show the students' perception in what concerns this methodology.

Escape Rooms for Secondary Mathematics Education: Design and Experiments

Open Education Studies

Escape rooms are an increasingly popular form of live-action entertainment in which teams of players need to solve puzzles to escape or reach a narrative goal within a specified time limit. Current research suggests that this style of activity promotes the effective use of team skills in the classroom, which are desirable in the workplace, and also that students are more engaged in the hands-on learning environment. During this study we created a game designed to teach mathematical concepts related to finding missing side lengths in a right-angled triangle using trigonometry to secondary school students who had limited knowledge in this area. Our experiment tested the success of our escape room’s teaching capabilities through comparing student performance on a test completed immediately after finishing the game. We also evaluated whether students’ perception of the applicability of mathematics and their feelings towards studying it improves from playing. Finally, we intended to conf...

Understanding students' use of mathematical processes during a digital escape game

The New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 2021

Mathematical processes have long been considered an essential component of meaningful learning in mathematics, yet these processes can sometimes be invisible in the mathematics classroom or in learning experiences. This discussion uses the context of a purpose-designed, innovative 'digital escape' game to illustrate how digital experiences might bring mathematical processes to the fore of student learning while offering other affordances only seen in the online space. This article reports on a pilot study conducted with 12-15-year-old school students with the aim of determining if a digital escape game could promote the use of mathematical processes. During the digital escape game, it was found that students engaged with problem-solving, reasoning, communication and made connections within, across and beyond mathematics. The preliminary findings demonstrate how digital experiences may enrich the use and development of core mathematical processes, and it is argued that teachers could use their own expertise and knowledge of their learners to design such experiences, catering to student needs and interests.

Game-based learning and Breakout as comprehension techniques in solving math problems in Primary Education

2021

The change experienced in society as a result of the pandemic generated by Covid-19 means that education must adapt to ICT methodologies and tools that allow students access to knowledges in two ways: from the classroom and from their home in e-learning modality if necessary. On the other hand, mathematics education has the challenge that primary school students have sufficient and significant training in solving mathematics problems that allows them to function and integrate into society and their daily tasks with total normality without any problems. This proposal aims to make explicit how through a game-based learning methodology and using ICT as a vehicle through digital breakout, pedagogical alternatives can be established that develop mathematical thinking through meaningful experiences. For this, the learning of an experience carried out in primary education will be analyzed, Brunner's experimental method will be used as a starting point for the autonomous learning of students by discovery. All this will show the fundamental role that ICTs play in autonomous, lasting learning and significant of mathematics.

The Projection of Gamification and Serious Games in the Learning of Mathematics Multi-Case Study of Secondary Schools in Italy

Mathematics, 2022

Our research was born with the objective of evaluating the level of gamification of high schools in Italy, specifically for mathematics, and the use of the serious game of chess as a resource for learning this discipline. The methodology is a mixed design, based on the combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Regarding the quantitative design, the instrument used was a questionnaire filled out by 4845 adolescents living in Italy. The qualitative methodology has focused on the analysis of the discourse of 12 in-depth interviews with mathematics teachers from high schools. Among the main results, we found that teachers, although unconsciously, apply gamification in classrooms (without having had any training about it) and, despite recognizing the mathematical benefits of chess, they do not use this game as a serious game. Our study confirms that gamification deserves more because of the benefits it brings, especially for a subject that scares students and demands greate...

Students Perceive the Gamification Through Activities Based on Escape Rooms Very Positively for Learning at University

IJAEDU- International E-Journal of Advances in Education, 2020

The "escape rooms" are team games to "escape" from a room or a virtual room. This room is full of challenges that must be passed to win (escape) within a given time limit [1]. Due to the traditional teaching is causing problems around motivation and commitment and it is perceived as ineffective and boring by many students, the use of educational games is very promising because they are a teaching tool to enhance the non-cognitive skills such as problem solving, collaboration and communication. The games have a remarkable motivating power due to the use of a series of mechanisms that encourage people to participate in them, often without any reward, just for the satisfaction of playing and competing, and the possibility of winning [2]. In the academic course 2019-2020, we have developed activities based on “escape room” in different subjects: “Science and Analysis of water and beverages” of the Degree in Food Science and Technology, "Analytical Chemistry I&qu...

Using Game Kit for Enthusiastic and Interactive Learning in Additional Mathematics Classroom

2019

Gamification is a term used to convey a gaming-based approach in a non-gaming environment. One such application is in the emergence of gamification in educational sector. Additional mathematics is a compulsory subject that is offered to science stream students across Malaysia. However, most students have problem understanding and learning the subject as the traditional educational approach is less adequate due to its ineffectiveness in increasing students’ performance. To identify the root cause, a descriptive research method using survey among students is conducted. It is found that moderate number of students (n=118) have problems with additional mathematics with 3.02 as the average mean value of respondents in close-ended questionnaire conducted. The survey also yields difficulty applying concepts and tedious calculation steps as problems in the open-ended questionnaire response from students. The study also proposes a design of a game kit to aid in creating an enthusiastic and i...

Math Games: An Alternative (Approach) to Teaching Math

Getting students to read, digest and practice material is difficult in any discipline, but even more so for math, since many students have to cope with motivational problems and feelings of inadequacy, often due to prior unsuccesful training and teaching methods. In this paper we look at the opportunities offered by computer graphics, visual programming and game design as an alternative for traditional methods of teaching mathemathics. In particular, games may be deployed both as intruments to drill concepts and skills, but in addition as a way to identify challenges and possible strategies for solving problems in the mathematical domain. Our, perhaps somewhat optimistic, message is that, when coupled to instruction of visual programming, web technology and new media deployment, students gain insight by constructive explorations in a wide variety of mathematical problems. Moreover, by creating their own game worlds, reflection on the structure and complexity of mathematics is encouraged taking each student's capabilities and limitations into account, thus avoiding the fear of mathematics that haunts so many students.

Teaching mathematics in game learning environment

International Review of Contemporary Learning Research, 2012

The primary focus of this study was to investigate the impact of games activities in mathematics classes. The study incorporated a pre-post approach that involved surveys to assess students‘ perceptions of psychosocial features of the learning environment, academic efficacy and students‘ enjoyment of mathematics lessons. A sample of 90 students from three colleges in the United Arab Emirates participated in the study. After the initial collection of quantitative data, Jeopardy!-type games were introduced to 90 students over a six-week period. The findings suggest that, during exposure to games, students experienced an improvement in the three psychosocial features of the learning environment (teacher support, involvement and personal relevance) and also academic efficacy and enjoyment of mathematics lessons. The results of this study offer potential opportunities for mathematics educators to incorporate the use of mathematical games in the curriculum as a practical way to improve classroom environments and students‘ attitudes.

The Effectiveness of Game-Based Strategies in Learning Mathematics

Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 2024

This study sought to determine the effectiveness of utilizing game-based strategies in learning mathematics in the junior school specifically grade 10 students. In this study, embedded mixed methods research design was used to gather both quantitative and qualitative data from the participants in which the second served as supporting data to supplement the first. The results of the study revealed that game-based strategies provided a strong influence in maximizing learning mathematics and retention was also evident in the result of students' test performance allowing them to recall concepts learned and skillfully solve problems from the different activities they experienced with the use of the game-based strategies. Moreover, the participants shared meaningful experiences learning mathematics after the intervention. With the use of such strategies, they were able to recognize how lessons were discussed in a different manner with full of insights and realization that learning can be both engaging and rewarding. Moreover, the test performance result analyzed using mean showed an increasing average score indicating that the participants could still recall how to solve mathematical problems which took place after the intervention was utilized. Furthermore, results in the inferential statistics analyzed using Repeated Measures ANOVA also revealed that there were significant differences in the pretest, post-test, and retention test of the participants specifically majority on pretest and post-test, and pretest and retention test using post-hoc analysis. These results imply that with constant practice of utilizing teaching strategies like integrating games in class, it can improve learning outcomes, increase engagement, provide short-term retention, and promote pedagogical innovation. In education, these long-term knowledge and skills in mathematics will lead to higher test performance while aligning the 21st century skills essential in the success of teaching and learning.