Escape seminar: adapting escape rooms for learning at university

Traditional teaching is perceived as ineffective and boring by many students. Although teachers continually seek new teaching approaches, it is largely accepted that there are major problems around motivation and commitment. The use of educational games as learning tools is very promising because it allows teaching and reinforcing knowledge, but perhaps most important, it allows developing 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 the possibility of winning [1]. Creating a very attractive and complete didactic game is usually difficult and time-consuming but it generates a positive impact on students according to our previous experience in different Innovation Projects "Innova-Docencia" from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and the results obtained from the student surveys [2,3]. The "escape rooms" are team games to "escape" from a room full of challenges within a given time limit. To win (escape), players must solve the challenges contained in the room. They require a set of skills and knowledge to play and they have recently gained interest of the educational institutions [4]. In the present academic course we are going to use these concepts to develop the seminar of the different subjects from different degrees of "Universidad Complutense de Madrid" as an escape room. The subject involved will be "Science and Analysis of water and beverages" of the Degree in Food Science and Technology, "Analytical Chemistry I" and "Pharmaceutical Physico-Chemistry" of the Pharmacy Degree and "Chemistry" of the Degree in Optics and Optometry. For the development of the project, students will be informed about the characteristics and the development of the different phases of the escape room seminar, during the first day of class and through the Virtual Campus platform. For the seminar performance, professors will distribute the students randomly in groups among 5-7 people / group and they will solve the different tests using their knowledge acquired in class to escape from the seminar. Socrative is an interactive tool that is going to be used as the platform to develop the different puzzles of the escape room. Socrative allows the teachers using feedback with the students and this can be used to give the different clues, which the students need to carry out the challenge. Furthermore, surveys will be carried out to evaluate the activity by the students and we will study the possible correlation between their marks and the implementation of this tool.