Nur Haziqah Binti Mohd Mazlan
Mas Idayu Md Sabri
Miss Nurbaizura bt Jury (Primary school teacher)
In recent years, due to the impact
of covid-19, people has been more aware of terms such as pandemic, standard of
procedure (SOP), self-isolation and so on. These terms might be familiar among
adults and teens, but what about the children, specifically those aged 6 to 12
years old? Do they understand these terms yet? Do they understand what covid-19
is? Based on the literature review that we had conducted, we found that
majority of children had good grasp of the understanding of Covid-19 as well as
standard of procedure, but there’s still half of them that always misunderstand
some terms and does not really care about covid-19 at all. Remember, these are
the individuals who will lead the future, if they could not understand basic
information of covid-19, who will? Thus, the question arises, how to educate
children regarding covid-19? According to the literature review we had
conducted, game-based learning might be one if not the best approach we can
propose to educate children regarding covid-19 and standard of procedure (SOP)
since majority of children are familiar with the concept of game and
entertainment. Why do we opt to develop this innovation? From our research on
existing approach to educate on Covid-19, there is lack of child-friendly
information regarding Covid-19 and there is also lack of game with the purpose
of educating about Covid-19. Our innovation is a fully functional, ready to be
distributed android mobile game, ‘Covidville’ which the target user would be
but not limited to children aged 6 to 12 years old. It is a sandbox game for
android devices that include multiple levels that represent different
situations of a person living during pandemic in order to let the player relate
to the character being played. The unique catch of our innovation is that this
innovation is designed specifically based on Malaysia’s Standard Operating
Procedure (SOP) and includes storyline reflecting the phase of before, during
and after pandemic. Compared to existing innovation of similar concept, we
added more features to improve flow and functionality of our game besides
translating real-world data and content such as complex documentation from the
Ministry of Health using a fun and colorful graphic. With this innovation, we
believe that the players learn about the importance of following Standard of
Procedure (SOP) guidelined and raise their awareness on how dangerous and
severe Covid-19 is. We really hope that the use of game-based learning in
mobile game would increase the interest of the children and to learn about
covid-19