Development and Evaluation of a Gamified Flashcard Intervention for Nutrition Education among Students: The Super Heroes’ Food Healthy Card
1.Department of Wellness, Faculty of Hospitality, Tourism And Wellness (FHPK),
Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Kampus Kota, Kelantan, Malaysia.
2Exercise and Sports Science Programme, School of Health Sciences,
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia.
3Medical Officer, District Government Hospital, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh -474001.
4School of Basic Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Kampus Perubatan,
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, 20400 Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia.
*Corresponding Author E-mail: raousm@unisza.edu.my
ABSTRACT:
The increasing number of non-communicable diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, among others, is an area that represents the importance of effective nutrition knowledge from an early age. Lectures and textbook learning, among other traditional learning approaches, have proved to lack engagement and effectiveness among learners. Gamification, or the use of gaming elements in learning environments, is among the tools recognized to effectively increase learning motivation and understanding. The study aimed to design and test the Super Heroes' Food Healthy Card, which is gamified flashcard application software to improve undergraduate learning understanding of basic nutritional issues. These flashcards depict healthy meals as superheroes, each representing a different food group and its associated health benefit to promote positive emotional involvement and active learning. This is a qualitative study design, collecting remarks from 30 students, aged 19 to 24 years, using an online survey structured with a 5-point Likert scale. Results stated that 95% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that the app increased their understanding of key nutrition concepts, while 90% agreed on the reliability of the information. The percentage evaluating the app positively for learning support was 75%, 20% showed neutrality, and 5% opposed it. The findings show that gamified and interactive platforms are more beneficial for increasing knowledge, participation, and positive attitudes towards health nutrition compared to their non-gamified counterparts. The article highlights the potential of adding gamification components to nutrition education modules and encourages more study to assess information retention and outcomes on a larger population.
KEYWORDS: Gamification, Nutrition Education, Flashcards, Interactive Learning, Student Engagement, Healthy Dietary Behavior.
INTRODUCTION:
The rising number of non-communicable diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart diseases has identified the requirement for incorporating healthy dining habits in today's society1,2. Poor eating habits developed in one’s earlier life are likely to continue throughout their life3. Therefore, nutrition education for children has been identified as a significant component concerning the overall eating habits of individuals for their entire life. Conventional methods of nutrition education using textbooks and classroom instructions have been found ineffective in holding children’s interest in early-childhood education4.
Advances in technological aspects of education and learning psychology have thus brought a rising shift towards interactive and participant centered learning practices. Gamification is a concept that uses game elements in learning environments to leverage motivation5. In nutrition education, interactive and visually appealing technological advancements in education have improved learning comprehension and attitudes towards wholesome food choices in a way that turns learning around to make learners experience fun and meaningful learning6,7.
A novel strategy in this area is the creation of the Super Heroes’ Food Healthy Card, a gamified flashcard intervention aimed at enhancing nutrition instruction for students8. The flashcards depict nutritious foods as superhero figures, each symbolising distinct food groups and their corresponding health advantages. The intervention seeks to establish positive emotional associations between learners and nutritious foods by portraying these foods as "heroes" with distinctive abilities, so promoting healthier dietary views and choices9. This innovative style facilitates peer interaction, discussion, and engaging competition, hence enhancing learning results10,11.
Despite the efforts to promote healthy diets at the national and international levels, unhealthy eating habits in children and adolescents are increasing in prevalence, owing to the ready availability and marketing of energy-dense foods4. There is a lack of interactivity in the existing nutritional knowledge educational programs, and they fail to implement the knowledge to change behaviors5,6. This is a significant reason for the need to develop engaging, age-appropriate, and adaptable nutritional educational platforms that not only provide accurate nutritional information but also retain the interest and curiosity of the audience7.
In the direction of address this issue, the purpose of this research is to design and test specifically the gamified flashcard application, Super Heroes’ Food Healthy Card, for nutrition knowledge learning among students. In this research, an investigation of the students' perception of the tool is conducted in terms of usability, credibility, and learning support. Through these analyses, this research, in collaboration with the other studies showing the effectiveness of gamified learning, contributes to significant progress in using gamified learning in nutrition knowledge learning to ensure healthy dietary behaviors among young students12,13.
METHODOLOGY:
In this study, a qualitative research approach is utilized to investigate the students’ perceptions of the Super Heroes' Food Healthy Card and its effects on students' understanding of nutritional issues. Initially, the focal aim of this research is to obtain an understanding of the students' experience with the learning procedure by using the interactive visual flashcards. In this regard, data collection is done immediately after the learning procedure by using the flashcards, and an online feedback survey is conducted through Google Forms. This poll used the 5-point Likert scale for all questions, with responses from 1 being Strongly Disagree to 5 being Strongly Agree.
The target participants included 40 university students who participated in the study. The study made use of convenience sampling to target participants, which ensured that all participants in the study had been exposed to the flashcards during the study. The participants were university students aged between 19 and 24 years and were from various faculties. Each of the students was given an opportunity to view the Super Heroes' Food Healthy Card before submitting their feedback form, which took approximately 20 minutes. A total of 30 participants was used to ensure that all possible perspectives of university students concerning the instructional tool were covered.
RESULT:
The research studied the students' perception of the nutrition application regarding understanding of the fundamental concepts of nutrition, truthfulness of the information given, and overall effectiveness as a learning tool. The Figure 1 shown that most of the students viewed the nutrition application positively. On understanding fundamental nutrition concepts, most students, 95%, agreed or strongly agreed that the nutrition app helped them learn whereas 5% disagreed. In order to establish the reliability of information, 90% of students agreed or strongly agreed that information about basic dietary principles was correct, with 10% neutral. subsequently, in response to questions regarding the app's effectiveness in boosting student understanding of good eating habits, 75% agreed or strongly agreed, 20% were neutral, and 5% strongly disapproved.
Figure 1: Perception of superheroes healthy food flashcard.
In fig. 1, the data suggests that the nutrition app had a favourable impact on the majority of university students, supporting and verifying the app's effectiveness and accuracy in assisting with nutrition teaching.
DISCUSSION
This study examined a nutrition education application and analysed students’ perceptions with a specific emphasis on the application’s ability to assist with learning basic concepts of nutrition, provide accurate information, and act as a valuable teaching tool. Perceptions were overwhelmingly positive, and a full 95% of participants indicated a belief that the application made it possible to comprehend basic concepts of nutrition. This follows other research indicating increased learner engagement and knowledge gain using mobile and digital-based teaching tools, in comparison to more didactic and passive teaching methods14. This kind of application-based teaching and learning was likely to assist with retaining fundamental nutritional knowledge by engaging with material in an active, application-based manner.
The participants also found the content offered by the mobile application credible and accurate, as 90% agreed and strongly agreed that the information offered was credible. Credibility is one aspect that determines the long-term usage and adoption of educational technology15. Well informed and credible nutritional mobile apps have the capacity to foster greater confidence in one's nutritional choices and the processes by which one learns and decides to act independently16,17. Furthermore, the importance of validating the content offered by the application, as the students were found to be adequately confident in the information offered by the mobile application, while the degree to which the nutritional mobile apps available in the public arena were accurately and credibly informed has been established to vary18.
With regard to the overall effectiveness of this application for learning purposes, 75% of students were pleased with the application’s effectiveness as a learning tool, while 20% of students were neutral about this question of effectiveness in application use, but 5% of students strongly disagreed. One way to further increase students’ engagement with this application may be to incorporate adaptive learning paths, gamification techniques, and problem-solving challenges into future versions of the application to address more learners on different levels of applying this knowledge19-21. Highly interactive elements of this nature have indeed contributed to students’ engagement with application use.
This predominantly positive view of usability and learning alignment corroborates other findings that suggest web- and app-based health education modules can be an effective tool in enhancing health knowledge within a higher education population22-24. But recognition of both negative and neutral views, although in small numbers, suggests that health education modules and apps can never be seen and used as standalone tools. An app assisted learning tool with a mixed approach of teaching, classroom discussion, and reflection can be an excellent tool to harness health education and maximize health learning outcomes25. This mixed approach tool has also been advocated for health education to solidify health knowledge and induce positive behaviours modification26,27.
Nonetheless, in spite of such encouraging results, there are certain limitations to this study that need to be kept in mind while interpreting the findings. In this research, 30 participants were selected, which was done using convenience sampling, so as to reduce the ability to generalize the results. Secondly, the data gathered was based on personal perceptions immediately following a first exposure to the application, without assessing any long-term retention of nutrition information or actual dietary practices. Future studies might benefit from more representative sample populations being used to address long-term outcomes. In addition to self-report data collection, outcomes such as knowledge gain and behavioural changes should be used. The potential role of combining gamification elements with adaptive content delivery approaches to provide blended models of education might provide more information about optimizing digital nutrition education platforms.
CONCLUSION:
The Super Heroes’ Food Healthy Card was proven to be effective in its use as an engaging and trustworthy teaching tool that improved understanding and stimulated positive attitudes toward healthy eating practices among students. The findings of the study that is limited in scope and time, and that focuses on gamified and interactive teaching methods in higher education, have implications and promise in the scalable teaching and effective delivery of nutritional education. This study provides the foundation in developing an adaptive and effective teaching model in nutritional education.
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Received on 07.10.2025 Revised on 17.12.2025 Accepted on 22.01.2026 Published on 10.02.2026 Available online from February 16, 2026 Research J. Pharmacy and Technology. 2026;19(2):497-500. DOI: 10.52711/0974-360X.2026.00072 © RJPT All right reserved
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