Using Escape Rooms for Language Teaching

This paper attempts to analyse the impact of gamification on digital education and, more specifically, the design of a virtual escape room to promote the learning of Spanish in higher education. Due to the lockdown caused by COVID-19, which forced the closure of the facilities, classes were moved to the online sphere. The main objective of this project is therefore to investigate the different didactic applications of the escape game in the process of teaching-learning Spanish as a foreign language (E/LE) in the non-classroom mode. At the same time, the project aims to analyse the influence of gamification on the motivation of this type of students. To this end, the different characteristics of this methodology will be analysed, and they will be addressed through a teaching unit in the form of an escape room activity that students will have to carry out both individually and collectively. The results obtained through feedback from the participants show an increase in motivation in the students, more significant learning of the language and the development of different skills through an improvement in their learning autonomy.