Escape Rooms and Collaborative Problem-Solving: Examining the Competence of Teacher Candidates

Abstract

The paper discusses the use of educational escape rooms as an innovative learning activity that can engage and motivate students to master the curriculum. Traditional didactic models are no longer sufficient to equip students with the knowledge and skills needed in the real world. Therefore, competencies such as communication, collaboration, problem-solving, learning, and performance enhancement are essential. An educational escape room is a game created for pedagogical purposes. It involves clues, logical puzzles, and tasks that a team must solve in a limited time. The game's goal is to escape from a physical room or find a hidden object. A crucial aspect of the game is the development of soft skills. The paper presents the authors' own educational escape room game, which was designed to measure collaborative problem-solving competencies among students in higher education. The authors used Guttmann diagrams to analyse students' performance according to their competence level. The study provides insights into the methodological possibilities of using educational escape rooms to measure collaborative problem-solving competence among students in higher education. The findings have implications for the design of future educational escape room games and for the development of collaborative problem-solving skills among students in higher education.