Computer games to teach hygiene: an evaluation of the e-Bug junior game

Abstract

Handwashing, respiratory hygiene and antibiotic resistance remain major public health concerns. In order to facilitate an effective outcome when teaching the basic principles of hand and respiratory hygiene, educational interventions should first target school children. As computer games are ubiquitous in most children's lives, e-Bug developed computer games targeted at teaching children handwashing, respiratory hygiene and antibiotic resistance. The games were designed for two target audiences: junior school children (9-12 year olds); and senior school children (13-15 year olds). Between May and August 2009, the finalized junior game underwent an evaluation in three UK schools (in Glasgow, Gloucester and London), involving 62 children in the schools and ∼ 1700 players accessing the junior game online. The e-Bug junior game consists of a number of levels of play, each of which promotes a set of learning outcomes (LOs). These LOs, complementary to those in the e-Bug packs, are expressed through the game mechanics (the rules of the game) rather than through story or dialogue. Although the junior game's evaluation demonstrated a statistically significant change in the knowledge for only a small number of given LOs, because many children had the required knowledge already before playing the game, this is e-Bug's first statistical study on the junior game and the first comprehensive evaluation of its kind. Future work includes a re-examination of the quiz-style questionnaires utilized in this study and an exploration of the potential knowledge change acquired strictly through engagement.

Can Gaming Increase Antibiotic Awareness in Children? A Mixed-Methods Approach

“…These include downloadable classroom lesson plans for teachers and fact files, quizzes, and revision guides for students. The e-Bug website also hosts several games, to be used at school or in the home, aimed at improving young people’s understanding of respiratory and hand hygiene, and responsible antibiotic use [9,10]. …”

Acceptability of an Online Health Videogame to Improve Diet and Physical Activity in Elementary School Students: “Fitter Critters”

“…Videogames have been used in schools to teach educational content and convey health messages related to nutrition, 9 alcohol and drug use, [10][11][12] and hygiene. 13 Videogame acceptability may be critical to the ability of these games to impact behavior, as student satisfaction and usability ratings of videogames were positively correlated with knowledge gained. 10,11 ''Fitter CrittersÔ,'' developed by Megazoid Games (Collegeville, PA), is an online videogame intended for use in schools for children [8][9][10][11][12] years old, which won 2nd place in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/Michelle Obama 2010 Apps for Healthy Kids contest.…”

Knowledge discovery of drug data on the example of adverse reaction prediction

“…Human-Computer Interaction and Knowledge Discovery along with Biomedical Informatics are of increasing importance to effectively gain knowledge, to make sense out of the big data. In the future, we can combine these fields to support the expert end users in learning to interactively analyze information properties thus enabling them to visualize the adverse reactions and allergy (ARA) on antibiotics data [44]. …”