New Perspectives in Science Education

Traditionally, the teaching of science education field has focused on theoretical contents, which added to the difficulty of knowledge, has caused negative emotions, negative attitudes, and low self-efficacy of students towards science in general [1]. The use of active methodologies has an increasing attention to teaching science in many years. Here, the gamification is an interesting method that uses typical techniques and elements of a game in different contexts of education [2]. A type of game-based education is the Escape Room games, which are a game where participants can solve puzzles and assignments with the aim of leave the room in a limited amount of time [3]. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the teaching methodology has acquired an online character. Flipped classroom methodology can be useful in this situation because the delivery of content is usually obtained through online videos prepared by the instructors [4]. This study aims to develop and implement an online Escape Room to observe whether there is a change and improvement in pre-service teachers' emotions, attitudes and self-efficacy towards science. To achieve this objective, the results obtained from the answers of pre-service teachers based on a questionnaire of emotions, attitudes and self-efficacy towards the activity carried out have been analyzed (pre- and post-test). Specifically, comparison of means for each questionnaire item and statistical analyses such as principal component analysis and structural equation modeling analysis have been carried out. According to results, positive emotions (joy, satisfaction, fun) were generated due to the online Escape Room. Negative emotions such as frustration were appeared too, but it is commonly in Escape Room games [3]. Attitude and self-efficacy items have a significant increase after doing the online Escape Room. There is a correlation between increased emotions and attitudes towards science, as well as high self-efficacy with the performance of the designed activity. Therefore, online Escape Room could be utilized in future works by adding improvements to achieve better results and greater benefits in the cognitive and affective domains of pre-service teachers in science contents.

Keywords: Escape Room, flipped classroom, science, gamification.

References:

1. Tobin, K. (2010). Reproducir y transformar la didáctica de las ciencias en un ambiente colaborativo. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 28(3), 301–314.
2. Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. In Pro-ceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, 9–15.
3. Nicholson, S. (2015). Peeking behind the locked door: A survey of escape room facilities. 2015. White Paper: http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/erfacwhite.pdf  
4. Tang, T., Abuhmaid, A. M., Olaimat, M., Oudat, D. M., Aldhaeebi, M., & Bamanger, E. (2020). Efficiency of flipped classroom with online-based teaching under COVID-19. Interactive Learning Environments, 1-12.