@article{7185,
  abstract     = { Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DEERs) represent a compelling form of game-based learning that situates collaborative problem-solving at its core. Grounded in constructivist and collaborative learning principles, DEERs require teams to negotiate meaning, coordinate actions, and apply prior knowledge under time pressure, conditions that promote deeper cognitive engagement and knowledge consolidation. The game environment provides intrinsic motivation through narrative immersion and immediate feedback, while cooperative mechanics cultivate communication and shared responsibility. Systematic reviews confirm that DEERs foster teamwork, communication, and critical thinking, yet adoption remains limited because creating pedagogically sound DEERs demands both instructional design expertise and substantial technical skill. Existing authoring tools either sacrifice expressiveness for usability or require programming knowledge, leaving a significant gap for non-technical educators seeking to design rich, interactive learning experiences aligned with curricular goals. This work in progress paper presents the DEER-Wizard, a low-code authoring approach that guides educators through a multi-step configuration covering puzzle structure, narrative flow, and learning objectives. Each step is grounded in established DEER design principles, including narrative framing, interdependent puzzles, adaptive hint strategies, and structured debriefing, ensuring that pedagogical alignment is built into the authoring process rather than treated as an afterthought. A connected DEER-Generator converts the completed configuration into a playable game. The Wizard builds on the DEER-Toolkit embedded in a 2D multiplayer dungeon crawler with cooperative play and xAPI-based learning analytics that support formative assessment. Together, Wizard and Toolkit enable non-technical educators to design pedagogically aligned DEERs without programming expertise, directly addressing the power-usability dilemma identified in authoring tool research. The DEER-Wizard is a conceptual design with a prototype implementation in progress. A planned mixed-methods evaluation will examine usability for educators and learning outcomes for students in authentic higher education settings. The Wizard, the Toolkit, and the generated Escape Room Games are and will continue to be released as open-source software and open educational resources.
                },
  author       = {Matutat, André and Franke, Benjamin and Schumann, Niklas and Rüffer, Hannes and George, Birgit Christina and Gips, Carsten},
  isbn         = { 978-1-917204-96-5},
  issn         = {2049-100X},
  journal      = {European Conference on Games Based Learning},
  location     = {Darmstadt},
  number       = {2},
  publisher    = {Academic Conferences and Publishing International Ltd},
  title        = {{Building Digital Educational Escape Rooms:  A Modular Toolkit with Low-Code Authoring Approach}},
  doi          = {10.34190/ecgbl.20.2.5434},
  volume       = {20},
  year         = {2026},
}

@inproceedings{6817,
  author       = {Matutat, André and Franke, Benjamin and Rüffer, Hannes and Schumann, Niklas and George, Birgit Christina and Gips, Carsten},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 10th Annual International GamiFIN Conference 2026},
  editor       = {DSouza, Prajwal and Tang, Hairui and Xi, Nannan and Hamari, Juho},
  isbn         = {9798400721908},
  location     = {Saariselkä Finland},
  pages        = {1--5},
  publisher    = {ACM},
  title        = {{Designing a DEER-Toolkit: Enabling Educational Escape Rooms in a 2D Dungeon Crawler Game}},
  doi          = {10.1145/3789624.3789628},
  year         = {2026},
}

@inproceedings{6818,
  author       = {Matutat, André and Franke, Benjamin and Schumann, Niklas and George, Birgit Christina and Keuntje, Jörg Michael and Gips, Carsten},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 10th Annual International GamiFIN Conference 2026},
  editor       = {DSouza, Prajwal and Tang, Hairui and Xi, Nannan and Hamari, Juho},
  isbn         = {9798400721908},
  location     = {Saariselkä Finland},
  pages        = {1--6},
  publisher    = {ACM},
  title        = {{Designing Workshops to Bridge Visual and Textual Programming: A Narrative Game Approach}},
  doi          = {10.1145/3789624.3789625},
  year         = {2026},
}

@inproceedings{3062,
  author       = {Matutat, André and George, Birgit Christina and Gips, Carsten},
  location     = {Berlin, Bochum, Heilbronn},
  title        = {{Selbstgesteuertes Lernen im Dungeon}},
  year         = {2023},
}

@inproceedings{4295,
  author       = {Matutat, André and Reinsch, Malte and Kirsch, André and George, Birgit Christina and Gips, Carsten},
  booktitle    = {StartPlay 2023 : Proceedings of the 2nd Interdisciplinary Conference on Gamification and Innovation},
  location     = {Bergische Universität Wuppertal},
  publisher    = {Bergische Universität Wuppertal},
  title        = {{Learning by Questing}},
  year         = {2023},
}

@inproceedings{4298,
  author       = {Matutat, André and George, Birgit Christina and Gips, Carsten},
  location     = {Hochschule Bielefeld},
  title        = {{Dungeon: Learning by Questing}},
  year         = {2023},
}

@inproceedings{3655,
  author       = {Kirsch, André and Matutat, André and Reinsch, Malte and George, Birgit Christina and Gips, Carsten},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop "Automatische Bewertung von Programmieraufgaben" (ABP 2023)},
  editor       = {Greubel, André and Strickroth, Sven and Striewe, Michael},
  keywords     = {Autograding, Automatisiertes Feedback, CI/CD-Pipeline},
  location     = {München},
  publisher    = {Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.},
  title        = {{Deploy-to-Grading: Automatische Bewertung von Programmieraufgaben mit CI/CD-Pipelines}},
  doi          = {10.18420/ABP2023-11},
  year         = {2023},
}

@inproceedings{3044,
  author       = {George, Birgit Christina and Schwettmann, Marc and Kreienkamp, Angela and Müller, Kerstin},
  booktitle    = {33rd European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics},
  editor       = {Ebert, Achim and Lachmann, Thomas and Dreßler, Klaus and Lindblom, Jessica and Reinhard, René},
  isbn         = {9781450398084},
  location     = {Kaiserslautern Germany},
  pages        = {1--10},
  publisher    = {ACM},
  title        = {{Prosocial activities in video games player type based study concerning the genres assively Multiplayer Online, Shooter and Role-Playing Games}},
  doi          = {10.1145/3552327.3552361},
  year         = {2022},
}

@inproceedings{3191,
  author       = {George, Birgit Christina and Kreienkamp, Angela and Fehring, Florian and Gips, Carsten},
  location     = {Bielefeld, online},
  title        = {{Erfahrungen zum Prüfen im digitalen Zeitalter}},
  year         = {2021},
}