What was the goal?
The goal of the project was to determine the extent to which an educational escape game leads to a change in students’ motivation to learn in an upper secondary German class. The project was motivated by the observation that conventional teaching methods are often met with boredom and disinterest among students, and by the teacher’s view that there are too few creative materials for German lessons, especially for grammatical topics. An escape game was created to practice and consolidate knowledge of verbs, verb forms, tenses, and modes, and the project also aimed to provide a reference point for the creation of future educational escape games.
How did the project proceed?
The team first created an educational escape game on the topic of verbs, comprising four puzzles dealing with different aspects of this grammatical topic. To measure motivation, the team used the questionnaire for current motivation (FAM) by Rheinberg, Vollmeyer, and Burns (2001), which consists of 18 items divided into four categories: fear of failure, challenge, likelihood of success, and interest, measured on a 7-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was completed by students once before the escape game, to record baseline motivation during a standard lesson, and once after completing the escape game, to measure the motivation during the intervention. Students were also asked to explain their responses in short written statements. Additionally, the teacher’s perceptions were collected through an interview to obtain a more holistic picture of the change in learning motivation.
What were the results?
The data showed a slight overall increase in learning motivation through the use of the escape game, and the majority of students found the educational escape room motivating. However, the difficulty level of the tasks proved to be too high despite prior consultation with the teacher, which negatively influenced motivation in certain areas. While the categories of challenge and fear of failure showed only minor differences compared to the control lesson, students assessed their probability of success as lower during the escape game than during a normal lesson. At the same time, an increased interest in the lesson with the escape game was observed. Students’ written statements confirmed these findings and indicated that the instructions were too imprecise, raising the question of how accustomed students are to the riddle-based format typical of escape games versus the concrete task formats common in school. When compared with standardized values from the literature, interest and fear of failure fell within the expected fluctuation range, the probability of success was significantly higher than the standardized mean, and the challenge scale was significantly below it. The project concluded that escape rooms help combine technically challenging exercises with varied learning methods and increased motivation, and that such methods are highly relevant for teachers as they can also prevent disruption and improve classroom climate. However, the small sample size limits generalizability, and further research with adapted difficulty levels and more classes was recommended.