Educational Escape Room is an innovative method used in classrooms to motivate students. This article describes a version of Educational Escape Room applied to undergraduate students. Specifically, this work presents an adaptation of the method called Educational Hall Escape, characterized by the resolution of challenges in a game-adapted room in which several student groups compete to finish the activity in the least amount of time. To date, the Educational Hall Escape method applied to the field of business economy has not been reported in the literature. The objective of the study is to analyze the influence of the Educational Hall Escape method on the learning processes and emotions of students during the activity and its impact on their motivation and the reinforcement their competences and knowledge. An experiment was designed in which the class was divided into a control group and an experimental group. To measure the impact of the experience in the students, two tools were used: an exam and the Gamefulquest survey. Despite the fact that the results obtained show that the students perceived the experience as a game, it improved their motivation and increased their proclivity to have an emotional bond with the subject, the academic results remained steady.

Teachers often need to adapt their teaching methodologies in order to overcome possible limitations and ensure that education does not lose quality in the face of different scenarios that may arise in the educational environment, which are not always the most desirable. Techniques such as the Educational Escape Room (ERE) in higher education, are taking a great increase due to its popularity among young people as a leisure activity. This study shows an educational research based on the application of a Digital Educational Escape Room (DEER) to respond to the limitations of hybrid teaching with students divided between the classroom and their homes. Through the analysis of a control group, with a traditional lecture class, and an experimental group with the use of a pretest and a posttest, with the addition of studying the different learning styles of the students in each group, interesting results and conclusions have been obtained that offer a replicability of this technique for other fields and educational modalities.

Esta investigación presenta una herramienta que ofrece una ágil solución para aquellas asignaturas universitarias percibidas por los estudiantes con mayor complejidad. La herramienta combina, por un lado, el aprendizaje basado en videos y, por otro, un sistema de baremación de la dificultad, previo a la elaboración de los videos. Como punto de partida, se utiliza el feedback del estudiante para la obtención de un mapa de dificultad de la asignatura. A partir de las balizas identificativas de este mapa, se ha elaborado ad hoc un conjunto de videos para abordar las cuestiones clave y de mayor dificultad. Tras utilizar estos videos en la preparación de la materia, los estudiantes han realizado una encuesta de satisfacción, validada cualitativamente por expertos y cuantitativamente por el test Alpha de Cronbach. Los resultados de la encuesta reflejan la utilidad de la propuesta de aprendizaje diseñada y el interés despertado en los estudiantes. Asimismo, mediante un análisis estadístico, se pone de manifiesto una mejora en el rendimiento académico de aquellos que sí tuvieron acceso a estos videos, en comparación con el grupo de control. Utilizando como prueba piloto una asignatura de contabilidad, se ha conseguido llegar a una propuesta de aprendizaje que resulta extrapolable a cualquier ámbito de conocimiento. El sistema propuesto contribuye a un proceso de enseñanza eficaz para los estudiantes y les otorga el rol de protagonistas en su propia formación académica.

This work uses Belbin’s balanced group theory to analyze whether the formation of teams improved the performance of 21 groups formed by the 149 students of an Introduction to Business class in a collaborative learning environment in Higher Education. The analysis is based on a comparison of two types of groups: balanced groups (according to Belbin’s role theory) and those that are not so balanced. The analysis techniques used to determine any significant differences in student grade scores were the student average comparison and the Chi homogeneity tests. The relevance of the different roles that students can acquire when forming work groups was derived from multiple regression in the exams and practices punctuations, and the relevance of each student role was determined by discriminant analysis. The results indicate that balanced groups facilitate greater homogeneity in group grades, improving the performance of the group overall.

Purpose: The Audit and Accounting Firms (AAF) companies are of great importance as they audit companies in different sectors and report on their economic-financial situation. The academic literature has analysed these firms but has not gone as far as to review their economic and financial health. Therefore, this study aims to focus on the analysis of whether these companies are viable companies beyond the large firms, whether they generate profits from their activity or whether they tend to go bankrupt. In addition, the impact of COVID-19 has been studied, since it is questionable whether the effect on AAF has been negative or positive.Design/methodology/approach: In order to answer the hypotheses put forward in this study, analysis of the profitability, liquidity and solvency situation of AAF considering their size and age, as well as the impact of the pandemic on this sector has been done. In total, 12,469 European companies are analysed. After the descriptive analysis of the companies by ratios, the Altman Z-score model is used as a methodology to assess whether they are bankruptcy-prone companies based on their characteristics.Findings: The results of the analysis of the study have shown that these are companies of great importance to the European economy and that, depending on their characteristics, there are companies that may be closer to the risk of bankruptcy. This study is an essential contribution to the academic literature, public administration and the management of auditing and accounting firms.Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyse AAF at the European level with a panel data sample. The results obtained can be generalized and form the basis for future lines of research.