Texas Mathematics Teacher Fall/Winter 2022 - 9

Teacher Candidates Create Digital Escape Rooms
for Mathematics Application in Virtual Classrooms
Service-Learning Outcomes
The TC-created digital math escape rooms were
distributed to elementary school-aged students by the
TCs' mentor teachers in late November. At the end of
the semester, the TCs analyzed the feedback from their
end-of-game Google Form and then wrote up a reflection
that discussed their attitudes about the S-L experience
and evaluation of the merits and potential uses of digital
game play in their own future classrooms. Overall, TCs
expressed a sense of satisfaction with their productive
struggle in creating a digital escape room for the first time;
deemed the S-L project an effective application of math
and literacy content they had learned that semester; and
indicated a willingness to incorporate either escape room
creation or use in their own classrooms. In informal e-mail
communications between myself and the mentor teachers,
all expressed gratitude for the TCs' work and confirmed
that their students enjoyed " a different way to practice
their math skills " (personal communication, 2020).
Whether in-person or digital, escape rooms have the
potential to present a socially engaging way to practice
and review content skills through problem-solving
and critical thinking Additionally, both types of escape
rooms can be completed independently as they are
" self-checking [activities that let] students know that
they got the right answers if they find the correct clues "
(Giannattasio, 2021). Watching my own three children
test out each of the digital escape rooms confirmed that
rigorous, independent game play was an effective way for
them to self-confirm their current math knowledge and
skills. Each of my children praised the projects as wellconceived,
easy-to-use, and fun to play due in large part
to references to popular movie franchises like Marvel and
frequent inclusions of comical memes and video gamelike
play tasks. Mentor teachers echoed that the inclusion
of online math games increased student enjoyment while
tutorial videos inserted improved their subject matter
understanding (see Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Sample Google Slide from TC-created digital escape room including features that are
easily included due to the digital nature of the activity, including an embedded review video
and practice problem to activate students' prior math knowledge.
Finally, mentor teachers also appreciated another benefit
exclusive to digital escape rooms-having access to a
library of digital games they could share for at-home
practice or during breakout times during online schooling.
In their course reflections, most TCs explained that the
process of creating the escape room was time-consuming
because it required them to frequently problem-solve
technology-related logistics and story content flow, but
many TCs also claimed that the success of and satisfaction
with their finished projects was because of that productive
struggle.
www.tctmonline.org
In their white paper, Bullmaster-Day (n.d.) describes
" productive struggle " as the process in which students
connect prior knowledge to new experiences to creatively
work towards solutions. Many of the TCs were proud of
themselves for seeking out digital tutorials to help them
solve technology issues and recognized the effectiveness
of their trial-and-error efforts to make the interactive
features of their project work. Based on the results
received from the young students' self-evaluation of math
concepts learned from solving the escape rooms, many
TCs determined that they were effective at presenting
accurate math concepts through game-based construction.
Fall/Winter 2022 | 9
https://www.tctmonline.org/
Texas Mathematics Teacher Fall/Winter 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Texas Mathematics Teacher Fall/Winter 2022
