Evaluating an Educational Escape Room Conducted Remotely for Teaching Software Engineering

Abstract

With the rise of distance learning, new challenges have emerged for educators. Among these challenges, developing effective and motivating group activities for students in the remote classroom is one of the top priorities to be addressed. According to existing literature, educational escape rooms have proven to be engaging and effective learning activities when conducted face-to-face. However, no prior research has analyzed the instructional effectiveness of these activities when they are conducted remotely. Furthermore, none of the educational escape rooms reported in the literature has been designed for teaching software modeling. This article analyzes an educational escape room conducted remotely in a software engineering fundamentals course for teaching software modeling. A total of three evaluation instruments were used: a pre-test and a post-test to measure students' learning gains, a questionnaire to collect students' perceptions, and a web platform for automatically gathering data on students' interactions. The contribution of this article is two-fold. On the one hand, it provides, for the first time, evidence that remote educational escape rooms can be effective learning activities. On the other hand, it provides, also for the first time, proof that educational escape rooms are effective and engaging activities for teaching software modeling.