Let’s Escape! The Impact of a Digital-Physical Combined Escape Room on Students’ Creative Thinking, Learning Motivation, and Science Academic Achievement

Digital and physical escape rooms have been suggested as practical and effective approaches to game-based learning and have recently gained momentum. The deficit of scholarly works that simultaneously implement both types of escape rooms legitimizes this study’s significance and appropriateness. The researchers systematically combined digital and physical escape rooms and integrated them into fifth-grade science lessons (experimental group N = 22; control group N = 21). Considering that creative thinking is one of the essential competencies in the competitive world, learning motivation is a crucial factor contributing to students’ learning, and academic achievement is a criterion for learning outcomes. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration), the Learning Motivation Scale (value, expectation, affect, and executive volition), and the science achievement exam were used to quantitatively investigate students’ learning effectiveness. The results indicated that the experimental group’s creative thinking and learning motivation outperformed the control group significantly. Nonetheless, both groups showed no significant difference in science academic achievement. The present study verifies that a digital–physical combined escape room is an effective and practical approach that has the potential to be widely used in schools to benefit students’ learning. Some discussions, educational implications, and suggestions for future studies and practices are offered.