Abstract:
Pakistan as a developing country is lagging far behind its promise to the United Nation’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targeted to be achieved by 2030; with 22 million
children still out of school. There is a dire need for innovative interventions to speed up the
progress. Hygiene education and promotion is a major issue concerning developing nations and
its negligence is the cause of 110 deaths of children under the age of 5 every day in Pakistan
(UNICEF, 2016). It not only affects the health sector but other sectors of development of society
as well particularly Education. The students become victims of the diseases that arise due to
inadequate hygiene resulting in poor academic performance.
With advent of technological boom in the 21st century with subsequent skills required to be
effective, new forms of learning have emerged; game based learning is one of them. Therefore,
to improve learners’ hygiene practices in Pakistan, a context based serious game for primary
level students was designed, developed and deployed. The focus of game was not only on
personal hygiene but other relevant hygiene types as well such as food and environment. The
aforementioned 2D game deployed in various schools particularly in Out of School Children
School (OSCS). Two schools were selected to check impact of teaching hygiene through serious
game, first school was OSCS whereas other was NUST Creative Learning School (NCLS) with a
total of 44 participants. Mixed method approach was adopted to measure the effect of game on
participants in terms of gender, school type and motivation. Students of both schools were found
motivated to adopt the practices after playing the game whereas girls performed better than the
boys overall. The deployed pedagogy was found effective in making daily routine tasks fun for
the young learners of digital era. With relevant context and appropriate content and
design/development, such games should be introduced to enhance learning in a captivating and interesting manner while being entertaining.
