The Dynamics of Students’ Playing Profiles in a Programming Educational Escape Room

Abstract

Educational escape rooms have gained recognition as immersive and engaging learning activities. While existing research has primarily focused on students’ perceptions and learning outcomes, little attention has been paid to students’ performance, behavior, and interactions during these activities. This study aims to fill this gap by using person-centered methods to analyze students’ gameplay data from a computer-based educational escape room. Using Gaussian mixture models, we identified four distinct profiles of players using their gameplay data: efficient players who complete the game smoothly with little help, supported players who make good progress with the help of hints, relentless players who devote their time to seeking help rather than working on the escape room puzzles, and laggers who make little progress and fail to obtain the help they need. We further investigate the relationships between puzzle completion times and hint-requesting behavior using Bayesian Gaussian graphical models. The findings point to hints as the key to support players that may not easily complete the activity on their own. Lastly, we analyze the relationship between the identified profiles and knowledge acquisition during the escape room. We found that students’ initial and final knowledge differed by profile but learning gains were comparable except for the laggers. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.