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- All Subjects: Childhood Obesity
- All Subjects: Learning Games
- Creators: Broman, Tannah
- Creators: Agliano, Courtney
- Status: Published
The goal of this creative project was to create a card-based game relevant to a functional anatomy course. This game would facilitate learning of the muscles, their origins and insertions, and the joint actions to which they strongly contribute. In order to create an effective study tool for memorization and retention, we utilized aspects of cognitive load theory, as well as emotional design principles, including gamification. We focused on the three types of cognitive load: (1) intrinsic cognitive load (the inherent complexity of the learning material), (2) germane cognitive load (the capacity of working memory to create cognitive schema), and (3) extraneous cognitive load (aspects of a learning task that do not contribute to the learning goal). Our goals for effective game design were to increase germane load, decrease intrinsic load, and decrease extraneous load. Additionally, emotional design principles and gamification were used to elicit positive emotions regarding the learning material to increase the amount of working memory load dedicated to learning, rather than extraneous processing.
Background:
Approximately 1 in 5 U.S. school-aged children are obese. There are many known health complications associated with obesity including premature death. Family-based obesity interventions that promote healthy lifestyle habits are effective at enabling children to make changes needed to avoid long-term health complications associated with obesity. The purpose of this evidence-based practice intervention was to evaluate the effectiveness of a family-based obesity intervention on familial lifestyle behaviors related to nutrition, physical activity, and screen time.
Methods:
Two overweight-obese children (according to CDC criteria) ages 8-12 years old visiting a pediatric primary care clinic in a suburban neighborhood located in the southwest region were recruited to participate in this evidence-based practice intervention based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Familial lifestyle behaviors were assessed using the Family Health Behavior Scale (FHBS) prior to receiving an educational intervention addressing nutritional, physical activity, and screen time recommendations and again after following these recommendation for 6-weeks. Additionally, scheduled follow-up phone calls were made every 3 or 6-weeks addressing any parental questions that surfaced. Data was insufficient for statistical analysis, however, anecdotal recommendations for future implementation of this intervention resulted.
Results:
Of the two patients who participated, pre- and post-intervention data was only attainable from one patient. That patient did have improved scores within each of the 4 FHBS subscales (parent behaviors, physical activity, mealtime routines, and child behaviors). Overall, 11 of the 27 behaviors assessed improved, 12 behaviors resulted in no change, and 4 behaviors worsened. Recommendations related to a more successful implementation of this intervention in the future include improved provider participation (buy-in), utilization of broader inclusion criteria, consideration of the implementation time-frame, and application of the Health Belief Model for addressing existing barriers for each patient prior to implementing the intervention.
Conclusions:
In order to determine the effectiveness of this intervention a larger sample size and completed post-intervention data are needed. The small sample size and lack of post-intervention data inhibits proper data analyzation and significance from being determined.