Abstract:

This paper presents the “Food Safety, Health, and Nutrition-Group it or Answer it or Leave it” (Health-GoAL), an educational computer card game (ECCG) for the learning of food safety, health, and nutrition concepts by pre-primary, primary and secondary education level students. The design and construction of the aforementioned ECCG, is situated in the context of the European Project “Let’s make it better! Raising the awareness of the triad nutrition-health-food safety in school education” - (EduForHealth): 2014-1-RO01-KA200-002931. “Health-GoAL” design is based on modern social and constructivist theories of learning, in combination with basic game design principles. Ten (10) essential topics about food safety, health, and nutrition constitute the fundamental-content of the ECCG, where 10 content-levels for the game will be provided, one for each essential topic; for each content-level, 3 educational-levels will be available. The cards of the aforementioned ECCG are related to the said essential topics and feature both pictures and multiple-choice questions. Firstly, learners select the content-level of the ECCG and then, they are asked to make appropriate classifications by forming valid groups of cards and also select right answers for the question-cards. By playing “Health-GoAL”, students are supported (a) to acquire basic knowledge about food safety, health, and nutrition, (b) verify conclusions previously presented by textbooks and teachers, and (c) develop various cognitive skills, such as: observation, recognition, knowledge recall, comparison, classification, and identification of relationships among entities as well as analysis of the structural elements of a group.

Keywords:

Computer card game, digital game based learning, food safety, nutrition, health, education.