Most educational games require students to think quickly and use logic in order to solve problems. This requirement encourages making decisions and helps develop management skills. Many serious games are designed to engage students in a context and are excellent tools to help them develop a certain set of skills, such as strategic thinking, putting oneself in the position of others, the development of analytical and communicative skills.
One of the biggest advantage of using game-based learning tools is their ability to help students internalize the material they’re learning. The simulators provide students with an experience of what it is like to engage in activities that are typically studied in theory. Simulators help us learn by practicing in a safe, controlled environment. The skills we learn in this way are valuable for our personal and professional development. The two main pillars of escape rooms are roleplaying and simulations.
Games and learning are not faraway and unrelated topics; in fact, they can work together to be successful.

References:

https://www.game-learn.com/en/resources/blog/game-based-learning-in-soft-skills-training-5-great-benefits/

https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/1/3/building-soft-skills-with-games

Each training partner documented the participants’ experience as well as their own experience as organizers of these events by responding to separate questionnaires and providing their feedback. Moreover, with the agreement of participants, partners recorded the formers’ experience through pictures and videos, and finally compiled testimonial videos where the play-testing of the Agro_EduGames Escape Games can be observed. Based on the feedback provided during the Local Training Sessions and the experience gained in the preparation and observation of the activities, a set of Do’s and Dont’s has been formulated and is presented in the Agro_EduGames Booklet of Good Practices.

But what do Good or ‘Best Practices’ really mean and how do they fit in the sector of non-formal youth education?

Firstly, the Merrian-Webster Online Dictionary defines a best practice as

“a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption”

Indeed there already exist certain methods that have been proven and are widely accepted as very effective in the non-formal education of youth, including:

• Hands-on workshops
• Debates and Discussions, and 
• Group Activities and Challenges.

You can probably see how an Escape Room/Break-out Box which allows players to work in a group to investigate, discuss the different options of their next steps, solve puzzles and riddles, unlock boxes, and overcome a challenge, can result in a productive active learning experience. Simultaneously, a collaborative Escape Card Game, such as the one created by the Agro_EduGames project, requires players to discuss and debate about the most possible solution, reach common ground, and, in the end, review how their proposed solution to a given mystery relates to the one given by the game.

Therefore, knowing that Escape Games are a powerful, effective non-formal educational tool, a youth trainer would need a set of guidelines on how to apply Escape Games in the most appropriate way in the context of their class and the topic of interest. Regarding the development of agro-entrepreneurial knowledge and skills in youth, this is where the Agro_EduGames IO4 Booklet of Good Practices comes in.

How can a youth worker organize a training session efficiently and maintain the players’ engagement? How can the youth trainer provide feedback to the participants and create trust between themselves and the learners, so that the latter become more receptive to the knowledge? In turn, how should the educators make use of the feedback received from the participants to improve their application of the Escape Games as educational tools?

Stay tuned for the upload of the Agro_EduGames Booklet of Good Practices on the project website to find out more!

References

Best practice. (n.d.). In The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/best%20practice 

Avik, M. (2021). Non-Formal Education. Youth Europa. https://www.youtheuropa.org/non-formal-education/ 

These local training sessions reached approximately 100 young people from Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Poland. The feedback received from the sessions was very positive. Young people responded very positively to the use of the gamification methodology to bring them closer to agro-entrepreneurship. 

The card game was “the jewel of the crown”. Its innovative feature in requiring players to collaborate with each other instead of competing was not easy to grasp at first and caused quite some resistance. However, as the rounds went by, the players were able to appreciate that just like it happens in real life, in order for a company to thrive in any environment it is necessary for all members to coordinate efforts and communicate effectively.

The Escape Room and the Card Game alike placed the participants in positions that required critical thinking, sparked the constructive debate (and arguments), the reaching of consensus and decision making.

Entertainment was of course  a variable in the equation. 

And as we have the chance to prove before, entertainment and education make a very good cople!

Congratulations to all Agro_Edu Games partner organisations. It was one good ride!

But our mission does not stop there. In order to produce our IO4 Booklet with Good Practices, we need these games to be tested by a larger number of people from diverse backgrounds! In fact, we plan to test these activities with at least 20 youth workers and/or educators in each of the partner countries.

Each partner will document the experience of the youth workers who will be trained to use our resources. During this process, we the partners and the participating youth workers will get a chance to self-reflect. The participants in each country will complete similar testimonial template so that all their experiences will be considered equally. It will then be our job to collect these answers and notes to evaluate, test and improve all the Escape Rooms/Break-out Boxes and the Card Game. This will all be used to create the IO4 Booklet with a presentation of our trials, errors and successes, to finally provide guidance with Do’s and Don’ts!

But do not be mistaken… We call our final output a booklet but it will not merely be just that. We will include a video from each of the training session deliveries in Greece, Spain, Poland and Cyprus. Each video will contain the experiences of the trainees as they test the Games in each country.

We bet you are now interested in joining our sessions. After all, who would not want to be part of such fun activities? As the training sessions will be completed in mid-September 2022, make sure you find out more about when and where the training sessions are taking place in your country.

Contact the Polish Farm Advisory and Training Centre (Poland), Dramblys (Spain), C.I.P. Citizens In Power (Cyprus), and Challedu (Greece) to find out more details. You still have time to join us in September after your summer holidays.

Until then, enjoy your time relaxing under the sun and think about all the fun and knowledge you could gain by taking part in our training sessions!

The partner organizations meet in Athens, Greece during 11-14 April with the end of testing with internal staff and external evaluators the 5 Escape Rooms and 1 Card Game they had previously developed within the framework of the Agro_Edu games project. In addition, on the last day, one more escape room was developed based on previous research on agriculture sectors of the participating countries. 

The internal staff of the partner organizations had previously abstained from reviewing the escape room material, as were the external evaluators “kept in the dark”,  in order to be able to go through the challenges with a fresh mind and place themselves in the shoes of the project’s target group (meaning by only following the instructions of the game master). And that worked well! High spirits, team work and (sometimes over) enthusiasm and competitiveness were present during the testing of all escape room. 

At the end of each-one of them an evaluation session was carried from the present and online attendants where improvement areas were identified on how to enhance the learning dimension, adapt difficulty level of the challenges and ensure its understandability after the translation in all the languages of the participating countries. The external evaluators particularly enriched the session with the insights based on their professional background. 

After all the escape rooms were tested and the adrenaline was forced back to its original level by the unarguable power of Greek expresso, a quiet time for creativity came. Fostered by the beautiful and inspiring setting of ChallEdu’s office, between winds of brainstorming, storytelling, getting stuck and back on the road again, a new baby Escape Room was born. 

And at the moment we cannot say more. 

But you know what they say about babies, they grow hourly!

Studying agriculture gives knowledge about food production, natural resources and harvesting. Agricultural educators also teach students 
a variety of agriculture and entrepreneurship related skills, including science, math, communications, leadership, management and technology.

Why contemporary approach to learning is successful?

As every other subject, agriculture can be taught through classroom/laboratory classes or experiential learning – outside of the classroom. Why such learning is a good idea? Research show that learning is a process of integration – facts and ideas connect with one another across subjects, what gives them meaning. When we’re able to communicate that meaning, the learning is further reinforced. This is why theme-based learning is so effective. 

Educational value of escape room games

Agro_EduGames project introduces five escape room scenarios set in rural themes. This let the participants feel the vibe of rural environment and  stimulates imagination. Winning the game requires solving all riddles on time. Learning through experience is helpful when  in remember the facts. It gives the impression of experiencing a real-life situation. Of course we don’t wish anyone to be locked in a warehouse or lost in a new place for real; taking part in escape room games gives the opportunity to use the knowledge in practice and prepares participants for its further usage. Different than in the classroom, experiential learning enables to gain the experience of using the knowledge. We won’t just remember the knowledge, we will remember applying it and seeing the effect, and this could stimulate the brain’s reward center and encourage us to further learning. 

Imagine the same educational setting where the students are sitting in groups and playing a board game where they debate with each-other, solve problems and make decisions about issues and topics they have been studying, and as a post-assignment they will write a paper where they argue about the choices they made and theories they relied on to reach these conclusions.

Gamification is gaining relevance in all educational spheres and research backs up the fact that it helps retain information and motivates them in learning better and solving problems.  The Agro_Edu Games project is in the process of developing a card game which brings together characters or rural entrepreneurs, tasks they perform and challenges they face in everyday activities. All this information is inspired in the particularities of rural entrepreneurs of each of the project participating countries, Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Poland. Together with the escape rooms that are in their final stages, the Agro_Edu Games project provides youth workers and educators with great tools and tons of inspiration.

Click here for more information about gamification

Not only are the players thrown into a vortex of mysterious events and puzzles, but they also have a limited time to solve them and leave the room. Participants usually have from 45 to 90 minutes to escape.  Escape Room is a type of interactive group game, which usually involves from 2 to 6 people.

A brief history of Escape Rooms

Nowadays Escape Rooms are associated with real rooms, where a group of people is locked in. Their task is to solve puzzles and get out of them. However, the beginnings of Escape Rooms were completely different.

Originally, the game was available only in the virtual version. Computer games, the so-called Escape Rooms, were extremely popular. The mechanisms of solving puzzles were taken from adventure video games. Usually, players are first forced to find some hidden objects, which are clues to the next actions needed to get out of the room. Sometimes players have to find the solution to a cipher or guess a code that unlocks a locker or the next door. However, it all depends on the style, and even on the home market, the thematic range is huge. The player could follow the course of events with excitement.

Then the “point and click” type games were created, which gave players the possibility to take part in events.

As the Virtual Escape Rooms were becoming more and more popular, creating a real puzzle room was only a matter of time. One Japanese man, Takao Kato, noticed a huge potential in virtual Escape Rooms. In 2007 he came up with an idea to bring computer games into real life. And so the first live Escape Room was created.

There is also a thesis that the first one was probably created in Silicon Valley in 2006 when a group of friends decided to turn their fascination with adventure games and RPG into a real business and opened the first puzzle room. The idea caught on and from the United States and only later made its way to Asia.

Some even look for its genesis in the shows of 19th-century magicians like Harry Houdini. It can definitely be emphasized that they refer to and have their origin in more or less interconnected phenomena.

What is GBL?

The concept of Game Learning (GL), or Game Based Learning (GBL) is an area that includes educational games for young people and adults. There is also digital game learning, i.e. specialized platforms/simulators of reality that are designed to educate, train and shape (mainly) practical skills related to various fields of business. The most important feature of game learning is the combination of theoretical knowledge transferred to the user during training and the possibility of its real application in real time. Thanks to the game scenario being based on real events, each decision of the participant has an influence on the further course of events and development of the situation. The essence of game learning can be briefly presented as a connection of serious learning with interactive fun.

An excellent example of applying the game-based learning concept in practice is the use of escape games, such as escape rooms and card games. Escape Games are a rapidly growing trend, initially used for entertainment purposes only, but recently their use has expanded beyond that. They are now well established in non-curricular informal education.

GBL and Agro_EduGames

Due to its unconventional and creative approach to learning and teaching issues, very often this type of method is used for various projects. However, it has not happened before that any of them tried to use GBL in connection with the field of agriculture, more specific with agro-entrepreneurship. The Agro_EduGames project will act as a pioneer in this field.

Guide

The first product developed by the project partners is the Guide “The educational bearing of Game-Based Learning in Agro-Entrepreneurship for the Youth Sector”. It is a compendium of knowledge aimed at youth workers, trainers and educators who are involved in entrepreneurship-oriented fields. Topics covered will include Introduction to Agriculture and Entrepreneurship (Agroentrepreneurship (AE)), with a focus on irrigation soil and water issues; ecology and biodiversity or climate change and its impact on the environment and biodiversity.

Moreover, in order to fulfill a pedagogical role, the guide includes practical examples of application, implementation tips and correlated with the applicability of GBL and Escape Games in the youth sector. The guide provides concrete explanations, methodology and creation tips, thus analyzing the many ways to use and design Escape Games as a pedagogical tool in AE.

The guide in English is available at: