Keywords
Game-based Learning
Gamification
didactic design
Design Education
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Copyright (c) 2026 Sabrina Sailer-Frank, Silvia Annen, Laura Kleinöder
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Educational escape rooms (EERs) offer the potential to bring educational spaces to life, enabling immersive and collaborative learning processes. At the same time, there is a lack of empirically based design recommendations to complement theoretical considerations. This article focuses on the validation of didactic design recommendations and their potential for implementation in different teaching contexts. Building on theoretical models (Botturi und Babazadeh 2020; Hansel und Semmler 2023) and the analysis of expert interviews, key design categories for EERs are legitimized, encompassing content-related design possibilities, contextual linkages, and mechanisms of action as factors influencing learning success. The results illustrate that the development of EERs should be understood as an iterative creative process that is supported by clear learning objectives, small heterogeneous groups, a balanced level of difficulty, and hybrid (analogue and digital) scenarios.
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