The educational escape room as a strategy for solving problems ; La habitación de escape como estrategia en la resolución de problemas

The aim of this research is to know the strategies that 128 university students use to solve problems in teamwork while participating in an educational escape room. In this immersive game, the participants had to solve problems in a specific time and in a themed room. The research problem is if this didactic learning strategy based on game promotes/ facilitates the development of an essential competence: problem solving. This study uses an ad hoc questionnaire with a Likert scale to collect the information. The results shows that the students used group discussion as the main problem-solving strategy, ahead of searching for information on the Internet and the help of the teacher. These discussions allowed them to clarify and review content of the subjects. Women showed a greater commitment to activity, while men showed more stress caused by the time limit to solve problems. In conclusion, the educational escape room promoted problem solving in active environments where teams conducted discussions. We recommend this didactic strategy to improve the transfer of learning, promote self-assessment and increase student engagement. In future studies, this strategy should be analyzed from a mixed approach, paying attention to the configuration of the equipment and the resources used as variables that can influence the experience and learning of students. ; El objetivo de esta investigación es conocer las estrategias que 128 estudiantes universitarios utilizan para resolver problemas en equipo durante la participación en una habitación de escape (escape room) educativa. En este juego inmersivo, los participantes tuvieron que resolver problemas por equipos en un tiempo concreto y en una sala tematizada. El problema de investigación es si esta estrategia didáctica de aprendizaje basada en el juego promueve/facilita el desarrollo de una competencia esencial: la resolución de problemas. En este estudio se utiliza un cuestionario ad hoc con una escala Likert para recolectar la información. Los resultados muestran que los ...