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Virtual Sprouts

The First Lady’s Organic Garden at the White House has been used to help teach children about a wide variety of topics, such as how to make healthy food choices and prevent obesity. The use of gardening as a teaching tool has tremendous potential to influence the diets of American families, and ultimately to prevent childhood obesity. Our highly experienced, multi-disciplinary team of experts in childhood obesity, interactive media, visualization and virtual reality at the University of Southern California (USC) proposes to create Virtual Sprouts: Web-Based Gardening Games, an interactive and simulated version of the First Lady’s Organic Garden in a game-based environment.
Our program targets subjects from low income, minority populations in Los Angeles, including children ages 8 to 11, their parents, other family members, teachers and the community. Virtual Sprouts serves as a highly engaging and innovative research education program to improve PreK-12 research career opportunities and the community’s understanding of the health science advances in obesity and nutrition that are supported by NIH-funded clinical and basic research. Our program has the potential to revolutionize STEM education on obesity, promote healthy food choices and decrease obesity rates, especially in minority youth at high risk of obesity and related disorders.
Specific aims of the program are:
  •  Develop a web-based, interactive Virtual Sprouts: Web-Based Gardening Games and web dissemination portal.
  •  Disseminate the Virtual Sprouts Web-Based Gardening Games. We will disseminate our game to audiences in three local settings:Public Schools, Community Clinics & via The California Science Center community outreach program.  All of our dissemination partners have national collaborations and partnerships with peer organizations (e.g., CTSAs, unified school districts, community clinic organizations), through which they will work with us to disseminate our innovative program across the nation.
  •  Evaluate the Virtual Web-Based Gardening Games. Dr. Gisele Ragusa, Director of USC’s STEM Education Research Group, will utilize a mixed design with both quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of our education efforts.

 

Funding Agency: National Institute of Health
USC Affiliation: Donna
Spruijt-Metz, Principal Investigator
Gisele Ragusa, Co-Principal Investigator
                           Chad Lane, Co-Principal Investigator
                           Jaimie Davis, Co-Investigator
                           Michael Goran, Co-Investigator
                           Marientina Gotsis, Co-Investigator