Grant: Project Grant

Healthy eating has lifelong benefits for children, as it positively impacts growth and prevents the development of disease. One way to help promote healthier diets is through nutrition education, which is part of school curriculum across Canada. Research shows that the use of technology, such as serious games (i.e., video games developed for learning), may support teachers and enhance nutrition education by creating more meaningful and interactive learning experiences for children. However, most nutrition-focused serious games do not contain credible information and are not suitable for classrooms. Our research team (teachers, game developers, nutritionists) developed Foodbot Factory, a mobile serious game to teach elementary school children about healthy eating. In our earlier research, children found Foodbot Factory to be highly engaging, easy and fun to use. Also, children who played Foodbot Factory for one week had significant improvements in their nutrition knowledge. Now, we would like to understand if Foodbot Factory can improve healthy eating knowledge, attitudes and food intake in Grade 4 and 5 school children. We will recruit 28 classrooms across Ontario. Classrooms will be randomized (like the flip of a coin) to one of two groups: 1) to learn with Foodbot Factory in nutrition education lesson plans, or 2) to learn with non-technology based activities (worksheets, teacher instruction, videos) in nutrition education lesson plans. Each classroom will have 5 daily nutrition lessons in a 1-week period. In both study groups we will measure nutrition knowledge and attitudes using a questionnaire (like a test) and we will measure food intake using a screener. These measurements will be taken before the study, after the 1 week of nutrition education lessons, and then 4 weeks and 4 months after the lessons are completed. The results will help us understand if Foodbot Factory should be rolled-out across Canada to support nutrition education.