Marie Curie Lab STEA Room: An Immersive Educational Experience

Abstract

Marie Curie Lab STEAM Room is an immersive interactive didactic activity with an educational approach STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics), which integrates these disciplines and uses active teaching methodologies, in this case an educational escape room, for the achievement of significant learning. The objective of the activity is to bring the participants closer to science in a playful way, working on curricular contents of the STEAM disciplines in a context of interest to students, which promotes the development of skills for the 21st century. The escape room was presented in the first semester of 2022, at the Institute of Engineering to the university community. Four presentations were made, each with four teams of approximately three members, who worked collaboratively to overcome the challenges posed. The result of the presentation shows that the participants favorably evaluated the activity, found it creative, fun, and stated that they had learned about chemistry, teamwork and about Marie Curie as a scientific figure of reference. The implementation of this activity shows that educational escape rooms are attractive immersion experiences for the participants. In addition to that they can be designed aligned to the curriculum of various subjects, for implementation in the classroom. They develop skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity; these experiences are demanding, challenging, interesting and fun at the same time. At the end of this investigation it was identified that there is an area of teacher training opportunity in relation to integrating this type of methodologies in teaching practice.