Escape rooms for STEAM education: Comparing design phases

The use of Escape rooms in education shows a constantly increasing rate, since schools need to operate with different paradigms of learning. Teachers often incorporate such live action games in their practice either as formative assessment tool or as a method for experiential, peer-group, game-based learning. In vocational schools it’s important to encourage and motivate students in order to help them find their professional rehabilitation. This paper addresses the design phases that took place at a vocational school in Greece during the development of two different escape rooms. As part of their Creative Activities Zone (CAZ) classes, 12 STEAM students created a Christmas-themed Escape room for a local council. This project was built upon another escape room developed at the same school the previous year by 39 multidisciplinary students. In both games, one student took the role of a non-player character (NPC) and interacted with the players throughout the game. This article presents and compares the design stages for the aforementioned action plans in order to assist educators and other stakeholders with incorporating escape rooms into their teaching practice. Designing escape rooms that combine technology, creative writing and drama games, can offer students opportunities to think outside the box, develop problem-solving, decision making, and strategic planning skills, as well as become useful citizens to their local community.