Science subjects, especially physics, are not among the most popular with elementary school students. This may be due, among other things, to the limited range of experimental work and weak connections to everyday life, as well as low student motivation.
This can be overcome by employing experiments and didactic games in the classroom. An escape room is a form of mental and social game that is increasingly used in educational settings. It is based on collaboration and team-solving of tasks. An escape room can serve as a setting for conducting experiments, thereby increasing student engagement and interest in learning, while also improving their attitude toward the subject. For the purposes of the study, an escape room was designed to enable students to consolidate their knowledge and understanding of light after completing the respective instructional unit. The experiments used in the escape room are simple to perform and closely connected to real-world phenomenon that students encounter in their daily lives.
Five teachers and 25 eighth-grade students from a selected elementary school participated in the study on the use of the escape room to consolidate knowledge of light. The students provided their opinion about the escape room through questionnaires. They also contributed to evaluating their knowledge before and after the implementation of the escape room. The results show the high quality of the prepared escape room. The didactic game contributed to knowledge improvement, with an average g-factor of 0.27. After optimization, the knowledge further improved. The situational interest of the students during the didactic escape room was high. The study also presents improvements suggested by the students, the teachers, and the author, as well as some problems and shortcomings. Furthermore, the effects of these improvements on the escape room are described.
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