Designing a digital escape room game: An experience of a digital learning tool in basic education

Abstract

The study aims to explore the perspectives of primary school teacher candidates who attend Turkish Language Teaching courses on their experiences of developing digital educational escape room games (DEERGs). Phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The study group comprised 48 primary school teacher candidates who were reached by the easily accessible sampling method. A semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher and DEERGs designed by the participants were used as data collection tools. In the 14-week study, interviews were conducted with the Microsoft Teams program. The findings were analyzed from a holistic perspective using content analysis. Results; showed that the participants preferred Google Forms and Genially tools in game design, and they benefited from Web 2.0 tools. In mother tongue teaching, games for reading and writing skills were designed, and mostly primary school and 4th-grade achievements were selected. It has been seen that they consider areas of interest, individual differences, and constructs that support cognitive-emotional and skill development in scripting. It has been emphasized that DEERGs contribute to attention, focus, maintaining and motivating learning, problem-solving, developing a positive attitude towards the lesson, and learning by having fun.

Possible Utilization of Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools for Creating Digital Educational Escape Rooms

“…Teachers and other educators usually use free online tools and applications to develop their digital escape games (Kroski, 2020a). Google Slides, Genially, Thinglink, Google Sites, Canva, Google Forms, LearningApps, Flippity, and Padlet are indicated in the literature as the main tools used by teachers (and future teachers) for creating the game environment, locks, and puzzles (Ambrožová & Kaliba, 2021;Repetto et al, 2023;Şahin, 2023). Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has transformative potential in the domain of education and many teachers may find AI-based tools helpful (Cooper, 2023).…”