Incorporating Curriculum Content into Educational Escape Games for Middle School Students

Abstract

Since 2007, escape rooms have become increasingly popular in mainstream society. The heightened sense of urgency felt when participating in escape games, united with the possibility of engaging students both in academic and soft-skills has led teachers to add escape games to the list of game-based strategies increasingly used in classrooms. Through action research, two educators developed 37 educational escape games for one South Texas middle school over the course of eight months. This article explores the fidelity of incorporating curricular content into educational escape games. Although researchers concluded that it is possible to effectively incorporate content into the educational escape games, it is more difficult than anticipated. Effective inclusion of curriculum content requires a focus on the content objective combined with a high level of content-specific knowledge and pedagogy. Furthermore, game design and logistics can hinder the rigor of the curriculum embedded in the games.

Keywords:

• Middle school
• game-based learning
• best practices
• escape games

Disclosure statement

I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.