Abstract:

It is widely recognized that in diabetes to learn the insulin metabolism is essential for ensuring a good quality of life as well as the adherence to an appropriate therapy. For these reasons, it is important that the education process adopt strategies to motivate and make the learning effective, above all in case of teenagers. In this context, new technologies can help to make the learning process more engaging. This was the direction of several studies conducted by a team of researchers of the Department of Informatics in collaboration with a team of medical experts of Diabetes Division of Department of Metabolic Diseases and Medical Genetics of the “Giovanni XXIII” Hospital in Bari. In the latest years they have designed and implemented innovative solutions to foster learning in young diabetic subjects. The main idea is to use the game approach in order to make the learning and training process more attractive and intuitive. The goal of the game, TreasureHunter herein presented is to allow the acquisition of self-management skills in children aged between 8-12 years. The challenge of the game is to train young diabetic to self-manage their clinical conditions and especially to prevent serious hypoglycaemic events and reducing psychological burdens. Nevertheless, “Treasure Hunter” was a useful tool also for their unaffected friends, making them aware of the proper lifestyle for a diabetic.

In order to measure the learning effectiveness and the usability of the game a pilot study was conducted with patients at the Diabetes Division of Department of Metabolic Diseases and Medical Genetics of the “Giovanni XXIII” Hospital in Bari. The pilot study confirmed the literature evidences about the learning effectiveness: the game dimension and the interactive approach allow young patients to learn with more enthusiasm how to prevent hypoglycaemic events and to handle their therapy.

The user users satisfaction was also measured by collecting the impressions and opinions of children and parents. Among the comments the young users required the game console version (eg. the Nintendo S), the parents required to have it at home in order to "do less work to do to learn some basic concepts".

Keywords:

Gamification, game based learning.