GAME-MODE ACTIVATED: BUILDING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE THROUGH DIGITAL ESCAPE ROOMS AS ESP TEACHING AND LEARNING TOOLS
GAME-MODE ACTIVATED: BUILDING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE THROUGH DIGITAL ESCAPE ROOMS AS ESP TEACHING AND LEARNING TOOLS

Summary/Abstract: Game-Mode Activated: Building Communities of Practice through Digital Escape Rooms as ESP Teaching and Learning Tools. The paper aims to explore the creative potential and practical use of digital escape rooms as innovative and multimodal tools for the building of communities of practice within English for Specific Purposes education. Designed and customised for ESP courses, digital educational escape rooms can present a valuable opportunity to engage learners in an immersive, interactive, and collaborative experience meant to enhance the development of language and creative thinking skills. The study explores how the incorporation of escape rooms as ESP formative assessment may facilitate learning by allowing students to develop communities of practice based on experiential learning, by shedding light on the challenges and opportunities raised by this educational approach. It also analyses how the design and use of escape rooms as an effort to employ digital pedagogical competence can boost motivation among language learners while also creating a socio-emotional learning environment. In order to investigate the pedagogical value of escape rooms, this paper outlines the design process, the targeted learning paths, the multimodal storyline, as well as the ESP-specific content organised as puzzles, tasks, and activities embedded in the escape room. A digital escape room meant to teach and assess language, digital, and communication competences for undergraduates majoring in the Pedagogy of Preschool and Primary Education is exemplified, the study sharing results obtained from a questionnaire administered to undergraduate students based on their experience of completing digital escape room sessions. Digital escape rooms can provide impactful learning environments for a social-emotional framework of teaching ESP, while also allowing participants to bond into communities in practice where they interact by putting to test their 21st century skills.

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