Problem-solving is a skill of fundamental importance for populations with developmental delays, and especially for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Training students with ASD to solve ill-defined problems is a challenging objective for educational and therapeutic teams. This is due to the myriad of unpredictable situations presented…

Innovations in medical education, including the integration of narrative-based tales, are transforming the way complex biochemical concepts are taught and understood. In this "Idea to Explore", the essence of integrating tales that personify molecules and depict biochemical processes as engaging stories to enhance student engagement,…

Contribution: In this article, an experience applying three role-playing games in the context of an Entrepreneurship final project is presented, discussing the challenges, and the lessons learned. Background: Soft skills have been expounded repeatedly as a crucial factor to thrive in the workplace, as opposed to mere knowledge of content only,…

Games are an everyday part of most students' lives. Games engage students and provide opportunities to foster perseverance in problem solving. When implemented in the mathematics classroom, game-based learning can have similar positive benefits. Students can enjoy mathematics and develop important life skills that will help them in their current…

An escape room can be a great way for students to apply and practice mathematics they have learned. This article describes the development and implementation of a mathematical escape room with important principles to incorporate in escape rooms to help students persevere in problem solving.

There is growing interest in games as an exciting and engaging tool for professional development. At GFRP, we believe gamification holds promise for in-person and on-line professional development designed to build the capacity of teachers and all those who work to engage families in their multiple roles supporting their children's learning and…

A digital escape room is a gamified activity in which students work collaboratively to solve a series of tasks or riddles within a certain amount of time. They are typically embedded in a story framework at the end of which students need to "escape" an imaginary scenario. Students explore the target culture while using the target…

iLookOut for Child Abuse (iLookOut) is an online, interactive educational programme designed to help early childhood educators/practitioners protect young children from harm, and in particular to become better at identifying and reporting suspected child abuse. The purpose of this paper is to describe the conceptual foundations and practical…

Chemical escape rooms (ChEsRms) are educational games in which students use their brain, chemical knowledge, intuition, and a bit of luck to solve a mystery. At the Weizmann Institute, we have developed ChEsRms that are implemented by teachers in their classes. Since the COVID-19 pandemic stopped all the educational activities that took place in…

In this paper we discuss the potential of digital games to create meaningful educational experiences that contribute to the learning of ethics in higher education (HE) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degrees. We describe the design of a new digital ethics game with a focus on the challenges we encountered when applying…

Gamification has a strong track record of improving student engagement and learning in the chemical sciences. Meta-analyses of different approaches to gamification have highlighted that providing a game fiction, encouraging students to work in teams, and breaking games into smaller "quests" are particularly effective. Here, we aimed to…

While the development of creativity, or creative thinking, in mathematics is considered important by many researchers, there are several difficulties in implementing creative tasks, especially before secondary school. Within the original context of a mathematical escape game, this paper reports two episodes exemplifying the difficulties met by…

This teaching brief describes an engaging, in-class exercise that introduces genetic algorithms as well as advanced Excel functions and capabilities by modeling the familiar Sudoku puzzle. Student groups are first asked to manually solve a given puzzle and then translate that solution methodology to a spreadsheet model. This exercise can be used…

An important aspect of bringing innovation to education is supporting children's own innovative thinking. Teachers are finding that escape room activities can provoke children's wonder and determination to pursue their curiosity, which builds a foundation for innovators of the future.

In this article, the author describes how to help develop students' conceptual understanding of fractions through the tactical card-based game Nearest to One. Nearest to One promotes number-sense based strategies for comparing fractions, such as benchmarking (e.g., Is the fraction greater or less than one-half?) and building to the next whole,…