ANALYSIS OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS' EMOTIONS DURING A STEM ONLINE ESCAPE ROOM

Abstract

Students' emotions are important in the teaching and learning process but becomes more essential in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education because, traditionally, STEM disciplines cause a negative emotions and disinterest to students from an early age. In the context of active learning, the use of gamification and games in class can improve factors like satisfaction and interest to STEM disciplines. The Escape Rooms are games that can increase the positive emotions and motivation of the participants with multiple benefits such as student´s motivation or engagement. In this study, the objectives are to analyze the effect on pre-service teachers' emotions produced by the implementation of an online Escape Room used to teach science contents in a STEM course. A total of 42 students participated for this study in a general science course of the primary education bachelor’s degree in Spain during 2020/2021 course. According to results the online Escape Room had a significant difference in 6 of the 10 emotions studied through the questionnaire validated by Cronbach Alpha test. It is observed that there is an increase in positive emotions “joy”, “satisfaction” and “fun” after the intervention. However, there is also an increase of negative emotions “nervousness”, “frustration” and “worry”. According to the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), pre-test answers were grouped in the positive emotions and the post-test answers were grouped in the negative emotions. Although having difficulties of an online environment reflecting negative emotions in the activity, it was an effective instruction methodology and can be motivating for students.