Kalèdo, the nutritional board game: two trails which assess the educational impact of a boardgame.

Kaledo, the nutritional board game: two trails which assess the educational impact of a boardgame.

Here we take a look at two articles that examine the effect of ‘Kalèdo’1, an educational board game designed to teach children nutritional knowledge and influence dietary behaviours. The first article is the report on the pilot study2 of the game’s impact and the second3 is the report of a larger study into the game’s impact.

At a glance:

  • Game: Kalèdo 
  • Subject: Nutrition, health eating
  • Method: Cluster-randomised trial
  • Place: Campania, Italy
  • Conclusion: Kaledo improved nutrition knowledge and dietary behavior over 6 months and had a sustained effect on the BMI z-score4
  • What I found interesting for the classroom:
    • Use games that model behaviours
    • Don’t just use games for memorising facts

Context:

The authors frame this study within the practice of using a game to improve children’s knowledge of nutrition as well as influence their nutritional behaviours. They cite the issue of obesity as a factor in needing to find ways to support children’s healthy growth. The article describes, but not extensively, other studies that have been completed around the use of board games and nutritional education. It is an interesting point here that in terms of board game research there appears to be a relatively substantial amount undertaken in the medical education field while lacking in other educational fields, I wonder why (time to find systematic reviews of these).

The game

‘Kalèdo’ is 2-4 player game that has been designed to support the improvement of  children’s nutritional knowledge and behaviour. Without having played the game, it appears that Kalèdo is played on a board with a  game path in which players receive cards that could be different foods or activity cards. The strategy of the game appears to be in balancing ‘the total energy intake (EI) given by the nutrition cards with the total energy expenditure (EE) given by the activity cards and the Body Mass.’5 The winner is the player who has the most points calculated from the ‘bases of energy balance (maximum 5 points), best food items (maximum 4 points), and food variety (maximum 1 point).’6  The game’s website can be found here.

Kaledo is a boardgame to teach children about nutrition and living a healthy life 8.

What to take away?

Rigorous research

Firstly, the trial reports that the game had a positive impact on both the nutritional knowledge and the behaviour of the children that were in the treatment group (those that played the game) compared to those in the control group (those who did not). This supports other studies that show that game play can have a positive impact on children’s learning. However, this  still remains within the field of ‘fact learning’. In other words, the game is being used because it acts as a motivational tool for students to learn facts that they may otherwise find ‘boring’. Even though it is positive to see rigorous research conducted in the effects of gameplay on students’ learning.

Games for more than facts

The second point to take away from this trail, which I considered to be of more interest is the dual focus of the study’s outcomes: to improve student’s knowledge of nutrition and to positively impact on student’s dietary and nutritional behaviour. The first outcome here is a fact-based one , as mentioned above. The second outcome though is focused on behaviour, and understanding. Here the students were not just learning facts about different food’s nutrition but also gaining an understanding of the behaviours of a healthy lifestyle. It is not wholly clear how this game facilitated this behavioural learning, so the following should be taken with a slight pinch of salt. How does the game achieve this? Well, it appears that the authors had included in the game a set of mechanics in which children had to make choices about what they ‘ate’ and what ‘activity’ they did in the game. The objective of the game is to find a balance between the energy consumed and the energy used in order to meet an individual player’s daily energy needs. These mechanics encourage a certain behaviour in the players in that they are emulating the educational concept that the game is trying to teach: to have a healthy balanced diet. The game therefore becomes a simulation (and this contentious word to use in game research – it is my use not the authors’) in which players can actively see the effects their choices in food and activity have. Here the game mechanics are supporting the educational object of the game. On the one hand it is a game of memorisation, in that it is representing facts in a fun way, and on the other hand it is a game of understanding as it is helping children to gain a better understanding of a healthy lifestyle.

At glance , what does this mean to our own classrooms:

  • Consider games not just a way to dress up factual memorisation
  • Use the game mechanics to mirror the educational objective of the lesson, therefore in planning the game children will be engaging in the learning.

Validity

Both these studies were cluster-randomised trails7, the first one being a smaller, pilot study and the second, a much larger trail. There is not enough room here to describe the full ins and outs of trails. However, the articles are transparent in their method and methodology reporting the key data and analysis processes.  The trails were completed in a northern Italian province in middle and high schools which may limit the transferability of the results to other area. The authors also reported a significant attrition of schools and students after the treatment (the use of the game) had been used. This basically means that schools that were a part of the trail failed to report or complete the assessments that the researchers had set – only 38% of children completed both assessments in the treatment group, and 29%completed both in the control group. How this affected the trails ability to detect statistically significant results would need a more careful inspection.

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  1. Kalèdo: https://www.kaledo.it/en/what-we-do/games/board-game/
  2. Amaro S, Viggiano A, Costanzo A, Madeo I, Viggiano A, Baccari ME, Marchitelli E, Raia M, Viggiano E, Deepak S, Monda M, Luca B (2006) Kalèdo, a new educational board-game, gives nutritional rudiments and encourages healthy eating in children: a pilot cluster randomized trial. Eur J Pediatr 165:630–635
  3. Viggiano, A., Viggiano, E., Costanzo, A., Viggiano, A., Andreozzi, E., Romano, V., Rianna, I., Vicidomini, C., Gargano, G., Incarnato, L., Fevola, C., Volta, P., Tolomeo, C., Scianni, G., Santangelo, C.,  Battista, R., Monda, M., Viggiano, A.,  Luca, B. and Amaro, S. (2015)  Kaledo, a board game for nutrition education of children and adolescents at school: cluster randomized controlled trial of healthy lifestyle promotion. Eur J Pediatr 174: 217–228
  4. Viggiano et al, 2015, p. 217
  5. Viggiano et al, 2015, p. 219
  6. Viggiano et al, 2015, p. 219
  7. Cluster randomised trails, for an explanation of these types of trials click here.
  8. Retrieved from https://www.kaledo.it/en/what-we-do/games/board-game/