Educational escape room in German language learning at university: From the idea to the class evaluation

The educational escape room presents an innovative approach to teaching, with potential benefits such as facilitating learning, motivating students, and promoting the development of general and professional skills. However, due to its novelty in the realm of education, there is limited empirical research on this teaching activity. Our study aims to investigate the didactic possibilities of using the educational escape room to teach German language at the university level. We designed tasks that corresponded to the language skills of 19 first-year students and incorporated them into a German language course. During the 60-minute activity, we observed the participants and then conducted a survey consisting of 11 scaled items. Using the SPSS programme, we analysed the survey data. Our results show that the educational escape room has both positive and negative aspects. While participants rated the activity positively because they were able to process and review lesson material effectively and because collaborative learning was encouraged, some had difficulty focusing on tasks while learning together. Overall, we recommend the use of the escape game as a teaching tool at tertiary level, but at the same time we would like to emphasise that more research is needed to better understand its didactic significance and to mitigate the negative effects.