This contribution by Padilla Piernas, Parra Meroño, and Flores Asenjo takes an intriguing shortcut: it borrows the AIDA model from marketing to structure a virtual Escape Room within an International Trade course and to measure its motivational effect.
The proposal goes beyond gamification slogans: it details the design (five countries, clues, sequences of challenges, restart after errors) and subjects the four AIDA dimensions to solid psychometric testing (alphas > .89; unidimensionality)—something rarely seen in this type of intervention. The results are clear: mean scores above 4 in attention, interest, desire, and action, with a gender difference in attention and interest that deserves further inquiry. The intervention also combines a university sample with an external control group, opening the door to richer comparisons that the study only begins to explore.
However, the work relies mainly on self-reports immediately after the activity and on a promise to later contrast them with exam results. This gap between perception and performance limits the strength of its conclusions: it remains unclear whether the rise in engagement translates into lasting learning, or how it interacts with variables such as challenge difficulty, quality of clues, or the time cost for instructors (which the paper itself acknowledges).
AIDA, while useful as a design scaffold, also risks flattening academic motivation into a linear sequence; gameplay usually alternates loops, micro-goals, and moments of productive frustration that don’t quite fit the Attention → Action narrative.
Where the article truly shines is in its operational clarity: it shows how to build a Genially-based experience that forces decision-making, error, and retry, and how to document it with replicable metrics. The review points to an immediate research agenda: link AIDA phases with process evidence (logs, times, help requests), cross them with learning and well-being outcomes, and estimate teacher cost-benefit.
If that triangle (challenge design, interaction data, and evaluation beyond exams) holds up, the Escape Room could evolve from a merely “motivational” gimmick into a genuine instructional instrument with demonstrable and scalable effects.
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How to Cite: Padilla Piernas, J. M., Parra Meroño, M. C., & Flores Asenjo, M. del P. (2024). Virtual Escape Rooms: a gamification tool to enhance motivation in distance education. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 27(1), 61–85. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.27.1.37685
