Real-life room-escape games are ludic activities in which participants enter a room in order to get out of it only after solving some riddles. In this paper, we explain a Room Escape teaching experience developed in the Engineering School at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The goal of this activity is to increase student’s motivation and to improve their learning on two courses of the second year in the Computer Engineering degree: Computer Networks and Information and Security. | Journal of Technology and Science Education JOTSE, 2017 – 7(2): 162-171 – Online ISSN: 2013-6374 – Print ISSN: 2014-5349 ROOM ESCAPE AT CLASS: ESCAPE GAMES ACTIVITIES TO FACILITATE THE MOTIVATION AND LEARNING IN COMPUTER SCIENCE Carlos Borrego , Cristina Fernández , Ian Blanes , Sergi Robles Department of Information and Communications Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) , , , Received November 2016 Accepted March 2017 Abstract Real-life room-escape games are ludic activities in which participants enter a room in order to get out of it only after solving some riddles. In this paper, we explain a Room Escape teaching experience developed in the Engineering School at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The goal of this activity is to increase student’s motivation and to improve their learning on two courses of the second year in the Computer Engineering degree: Computer Networks and Information and Security. Keywords – Room escape, Riddles, Gamification, Computer science. ---------- -162- Journal of Technology and Science Education – 1. Introduction One of the problems identified in the Degree of Computer Engineering of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona that also affects other studies is the lack of student motivation. This lack of motivation directly influences their study performance and their average mark. In this paper, we intend to amend this situation by designing and conducting a special Room Escape recreational activity. In this type of activities, participants are confined together in a locked room and can only escape after solving a number of brain teasers (Renaud & Wagoner, 2011; Zipke, 2008; Brent, 1999). In our Room Escape, these riddles are directly connected to the studying subjects. We have selected two undergraduate courses of the Degree in Computer Engineering of .
