Newswise — Michigan State University educators are using a video game to improve the eating and nutrition habits of adults.
"The Fantastic Food Challenge," developed through a collaboration between MSU's Communication Technology Laboratory (Comm Tech) and MSU Extension's Family Nutrition Program, is a series of games modeled after traditional non-computer games, such as card and dice games, and television shows like "The Price is Right." The games are designed to appeal to casual game players, particularly female young adults.
Players role-play as a contestant on a futuristic game show where the more they know about food groups, recipes, food cost and food-handling safety, the better their chances of winning.
"The goal was to create an engaging, fun experience that would intrinsically motivate our target audience to play and learn, then transfer their new found game knowledge to their real-world, day-to-day lives," said Brian Winn, a principal investigator in the Comm Tech Lab and assistant professor of telecommunication, information studies, and media.
The project was created in conjunction with the Michigan Family Nutrition Program (FNP), which helps low-income Michigan adults acquire the knowledge, skills and confidence to feed their families nutritious, cost-conscious meals.Nutrition instructors provide these opportunities by working with families in their homes or at various community sites. It provides education to more than 50,000 food stamp-eligible adults annually.
FNP instructors are finding it increasingly difficult using traditional means to recruit and retain young adults, said Gayle Coleman, Program Leader for Family and Consumer Sciences with MSU Extension.
"The Fantastic Food Challenge was developed through the perspective learning should be an engaging experience, where a person's interest in learning becomes stimulated enough that they are intrinsically motivated to discover knowledge on their own," Coleman said.
The game was created for playback on standard desktop and portable computers running Windows or Macintosh operating systems.Games include:
Great Meal Deal " players must learn the food groups through the process of play. Store it Safe " rich with audio, animation and interactivity, the game promotes sensory curiosity when players rapidly store food in their proper storage locations.
What Can You Make? " Players are faced with increasing levels of challenge and face off against three increasingly difficult opponents as they match ingredients with recipes.
Price Makes Cents " Players must learn the relationship between food cost and number of servings.
Digital game-based learning is an emerging instructional approach that attempts to harness the power and addictive quality of digital games and apply them to learning.
Comm Tech Lab researchers will study whether the games are effective in motivating individuals to learn about food nutrition and then transfer that game knowledge to real-world tasks.
"If digital gaming proves to be an effective education method for adults, then education could be provided to a much larger segment of people in a cost-effective way," Winn said.
The Fantastic Food Challenge was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Stamp Program.
Russ WhiteUniversity RelationsMichigan State Universityphone 517.432.0923Internet http://newsroom.msu.eduE-mail: [email protected]
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