Designing a digital escape room game: An experience of a digital learning tool in basic education

The study aims to explore the perspectives of primary school teacher candidates who attend Turkish Language Teaching courses on their experiences of developing digital educational escape room games (DEERGs). Phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods, was utilized. The study group comprised 48 primary school teacher candidates who were reached by the convenience sampling method. A semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher and DEERGs designed by the participants were used as data collection tools. In the 14-week study, interviews were conducted via Microsoft Teams. The findings were analysed from a holistic perspective using content analysis. Results indicated that the participants preferred Google Forms and Genially tools in game design, and they benefited from Web 2.0 tools. In first language education, games for reading and writing skills were designed, and mostly primary school and 4th-grade achievements were selected. It was observed that they considered areas of interest, individual differences, and constructs that support cognitive-emotional and skill development in scripting. It was emphasized that DEERGs contribute to attention, focus, maintaining and motivating learning, problem-solving, developing a positive attitude towards the lesson, and learning while having fun.