Fostering learning on sustainability: Plastic soup with escape boxes

Abstract

Commercial escape rooms have inspired teachers to adapt the popular entertainment activity for education, especially in STEM education. This global bottom-up phenomenon in education is implemented in several ways. Students use their knowledge and skills either to solve problems and “escape” the room or finish an escape game in time. This article explores why escape games are suitable for education on the topics of sustainability and climate change. Furthermore, it introduces a framework grounded in theories on game-based learning, which focusses on the three main challenges for the use of educational escape rooms. This framework was used to develop escape games such as on the topic of plastic soup. Subsequently, a study explored which game elements contributed to the appreciation and learning with escape games.