Published Paper Details:

This study examined the effectiveness of a specially designed a gamified Snake and Ladder nutrition game on secondary school student's engagement. For the study, a total of 80 students from JSPM School, Pusad were selected by systematic random sampling and assigned equally to an experimental group (n=40) and a control group (n=40). In the study, the experimental group received nutrition education using the snake and ladder game, were as the control group was taught through traditional lecture-based teaching. In this study student engagement was measured by the student engagement scale (SES) with 20 items, which assessed three domains. The results revealed that students who participated in the game-based learning intervention had statistically significant improvement across all three engagement domains, with the t-value significant at the 0.01 level. The behavioural engagement increased as students were attentive, took part in classroom or group activity, completed their class task regularly, and demonstrated greater effort during the lesson. The emotional engagement also shows greater enjoyment, excitement about learning, and positive attitudes toward the nutrition lessons. Cognitive engagement also showed substantial gain-students had a better understanding of concepts, remembered information more easily, and applied nutrition knowledge or concepts in everyday life. In comparison, the control group was taught through the traditional teaching method and showed only minimum statistically insignificant changes in all three domains, indicating that the tradition teaching method produced limited impact on students' attention, participation, interest, understanding, and application. The findings confirm that game-based approaches are a powerful strategy for enhancing student engagement, interest, and active participation in health education.