Abstract:

Our world is facing complex challenges whose impacts are becoming more visible every day. Events of recent years have accentuated the cost to the global economy of a centralized energy system highly dependent on fossil fuels; oil and gas prices are soaring to new highs, with the crisis in Ukraine bringing new levels of concern and uncertainty; the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hamper recovery efforts, while citizens worldwide worry about the affordability of their energy bills. At the same time, the impacts of human-caused climate change are increasingly evident around the globe. The need for an energy transition has become even more urgent, and young people, as the future leaders, play an important role. Raising awareness and educating youth on this issue is extremely important, however, the topic is complex to convey and they often lack engagement and motivation in learning. Providing information alone has proven to be insufficient, therefore, we need to seek innovative approaches in higher education.

A new trend is game-based learning using educational escape rooms (a live-action team-based game where players discover clues, solve puzzles, ad solve tasks in one or more rooms to accomplish a specific goal in a limited amount of time). The application of escape rooms to educational purposes has become more popular as a way to encourage experiential learning and engage people in their learning environment. While different types of initiatives are taking place in higher education institutions, these are often led by teachers and they are focused on sustainability in a very broad sense. In this context, a project has been set up at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, where students from the Master Energy for Society created a playful physical escape room experience as part of a course project, following a process of design, creation and testing over a number of weeks, and supported by a group of coaches. Our study shows positive outcomes: the master students learn by developing and implementing the escape room on different energy issues, apply theoretical content from the course (communication and behavior) and put into practice important skills such as creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking. In this presentation, we provide an overview on the project, explain its impact on students and address observations, challenges and advices when implementing such a setup in higher education.

Keywords:

Game-based learning, educational escape room, design, energy transition, sustainability.