Investigating and comparing the effects of an educational escape room based on Error Management Training and Error Avoidance Training on situational motivation, cognitive effort, and adaptive performance of dental students

To investigate and compare the effects of an educational escape room based on error management training versus error avoidance training on situational motivation, cognitive effort, and adaptive performance of dental students.

Two-arm parallel group randomized educational clinical trial with double-blind design. Phase 2 on 70 students. Randomization will be performed using the random function of SPSS software.

Context: Escape room with missions related to dental trauma, Setting: Tehran School of Dentistry Method: Two identical escape rooms differ only in gameplay (errors allowed vs. not). Effects on main variables are measured post-intervention using appropriate tools. Blinding: Statistician blinded to group data. Participants unaware of structural differences between rooms (in order to enhance the internal validity of the intervention, according to the reference on research in educational studies). The most important ethical principle: Post-study debriefing fully explains the research aim, group differences, and emphasizes that performance differences reflect data for improving education, not individual ability.

Inclusion criteria: Dental students in the 11th semester. Non-inclusion criteria: Previous training in error management, use of medications, and psychological problems that impair concentration and motivation such as depression.

In the control group (error avoidance training), students solve the escape room missions using a step by step guideline, while students in the intervention group (error management training) must solve the same missions through trial and error.

After the escape rooms, their effects on three variables, situational motivation, cognitive effort, and adaptive performance, will be assessed using appropriate instruments and compared.

* Study Randomization Method: Non-random purposive sampling, selecting all 11th-semester dental students as the accessible population aligned with the study objectives. * Random allocation to control and intervention groups * Unit of randomization: Individual (each student). * Randomization method: Stratified randomization with 4 strata: 1. Male students with a history of participation in an escape room. 2. Male students without a history of participation in an escape room. 3. Female students with a history of participation in an escape room. 4. Female students without a history of participation in an escape room. * Randomization software: SPSS. * Randomization procedure: 1. The number of students in each stratum is determined; for example, there are 20 male students with a history of escape room participation. 2. Each stratum is independently blocked and divided. For instance, each of the 20 male students with a history is assigned a random number (a decimal between 0 and 1, such as 0.7, 0.48, etc.). Using these numbers and the random function in SPSS, these 20 students are divided into blocks of 4 and 6. When we enter the student ID numbers into the software, SPSS randomly selects 4 students as the first block. The first 2 of these 4 randomly selected students are assigned to the control group, and the next 2 are assigned to the intervention group. The second block consists of 6 students; SPSS randomly selects 6 students (from the same stratum of 20 male students with a history) and the first 3 are placed in the control group and the next 3 in the intervention group. The third block is a 4-block, and this blocking process continues until all students in that stratum are fully allocated. Students in the other strata are similarly and independently divided using the same method. Ultimately, both the control and intervention groups will have equal numbers of male students with and without escape room experience, as well as female students with and without such experience. * Complementary note: Since the escape room game is group-based, both the control and intervention groups need to be further divided into smaller teams. The same randomization procedure described above is again applied to allocate the students in each group into 5 teams of 7 members each. * Allocation concealment: The allocation of groups is performed by a statistician in the days prior to the implementation, determining which group (control or intervention) and which team (Team 1 to 5) each student belongs to. This data is placed in a sealed envelope. The envelope remains with the statistician until the day of the implementation. On the day of the intervention, the envelope is handed over to the educational expert (from the execution team), who then groups the students waiting in the quarantine room based on the data contained inside the envelope.

Students in the two groups will be separated using entry and exit quarantine rooms and will not know which type of escape room they are in (single‑blind design). The statistician will also be blinded to the allocation of data between the intervention and control groups during analysis (double‑blind study).

For reasons of confidentiality, the data will be solely accessible to the research team, and only the parts pertaining to the article will be disclosed.