Hosted by OSOS , contributed by Anonymous (not verified) on 13 February 2018
Childhood and adolescent obesity is a major global and European public health problem. Students and teachers will be engaged in a series of activities, data collection methods and discussions with the eventual aim to address the issue of obesity and to provide researchers with much needed data, enabling them to influence policy makers to adopt new strategies on the issue of childhood obesity.
Technological achievements in mobile and wearable electronics and Big Data infrastructures allow citizens (students and teachers in our case) to get involved in such data collection processes, enabling them to reshape policies at a regional, national and European level. Using a specifically designed platform will allow the quantification of community patterns through Big Data and offer a series of sensors to the participating schools. In this context students and teachers become researchers. Furthermore, through the collection and sharing anonymized data, and collaboration with experts, students will receive feedback regarding their dietary and physical activity behavior.
The approach builds on the idea that collecting, storing, processing and analyzing huge amount of data that describe everyday dietary, sleep and activity behavior of large number of children, in combination with diverse extrinsic data describing the conditions of their environment (urban, natural, school, family and social), produces radically new evidence for designing counter-obesity policies.
To find further information on "Big data against childhood Obesity", join the dedicated OSOS community HERE
RRI Principles
One of the key aspects of OSOS is the inclusion of RRI - Responsible Research and Innovation principles in innovative pedagogical practices. RRI principles are addressed in the "Big data against childhood Obesity" accelerator:
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Governance |
Students aree able to share the conclusions of their project and activities with the different involved stakeholders, allowing to develop collective decisions and offering global conclusions that may affect society. For example, as students advance in the project, they share their results with the different stakeholders in order to define future lines of work with which they will be able to raise awareness in society. |
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Public engagement |
Students are able to define new relationships among the stakeholders involved with the aim of improving the results of the project. Students guide and support the creation of these new associations and encourage their joint work with the objectives of this Accelerator. Students in the participating OSOS schools can propose meetings between external stakeholders, such as nutritionists or chefs, to put them in contact and find their collaboration, in order to improve the final results of the project. |
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Gender equality |
Students work on obesity in terms of gender through the scientific method, looking for credible sources of information that define whether there are gender differences due to physical or social issues. Students seek information on whether there are representative differences in the obesity of men and women, and also work to improve gender equality on the issue raised by this Accelerator. |
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Science Education |
Students use the scientific method to work with this Accelerator, taking advantage of the tools it proposes and consulting with scientists and experts to improve the results obtained. They will also make use of technology to develop the project. Students make use of the tools proposed by this Accelerator, which allow both the collection of data related to obesity and its organization and subsequent analysis. |
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Ethics |
Students carry out an integral investigation work that allows to share both the project process and its conclusions with the different agents involved in the activity, thus allowing to share the responsibility of the results with society. Students can discuss the ethical and moral aspects in different phases of the project, as well as in gathering information and in the final conclusions, which can be an element of reflection about a social problem such as obesity. |
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Open Access |
Students are able to investigate the types of licenses that exist when creating and sharing content, and understand the need to maintain the privacy of certain types of data obtained throughout the project. Students consult the policies and the different types of licenses that exist concerning the use and treatment of the information, including private data (weight or body mass of students) and when sharing results and conclusions in a public scenario. |
Feel
Obesity is a major problem globally in Europe and in Greece particularly, instead of the tradition about Mediterranean diet.
Students get familiarised with the concept of nutrition, different types of food, modern nutritional and lifestyle habits, and the Mediterranean diet.
Students also have the chance to read some of the resources provided by their teacher, as well as perform their own internet search. They also reflect on their personal views and everyday diet habits.
Increasing awareness about healthy living, introducing students to the health-in-all-things mentality
According to the World Health Organization obesity is a major Public Health problem globally and in Europe infecting both the individual and our health care systems. In the young, overweight and obesity prevalence are soaring a worrying fact due to the chronic nature of the problem that usually persists throughout one’s lifetime. Evidence exists that interventions targeting various elements of children’s behavioural patterns, like what and how they eat, how they move and how they sleep and environmental community factors such as access to open spaces and food choices at school, can have a positive outcome against childhood obesity. However, most public health actions are limited to indiscriminate blanket policies not targeting on the specific needs of local communities. They also usually include single-element strategies something that limits their efficacy and effectiveness, given that obesity has a complex set of interdependent behavioural and environmental determinants. The need for community-targeted actions has long been obvious, but it has not been possible to objectively quantify the local community characteristics, in a reasonable timeframe.
Imagine
Students are encouraged to think about the consequences of obesity, the factors that might lead to obesity (e.g. social environment) and to think about possible solutions.
First students are familiarised with nutrition and diet, healthy and unhealthy food, different nutrients, nutritional value and they discuss their personal views and everyday dietary habits. They record and reflect on their own everyday meals. Next, they investigate their peers' dietary habits through a questionnaire that they distribute to their peers.
After that, students study the way social environment influences their eating habits. Students study advertisements that they see/observe in their neigbourhood or watch/listen to the media. They categorise advertisements that promote healthy/unhealthy food and they comment on the way these promotions influence their everyday dietary habits.
Why participate?
You will acquire both theoretical and practical knowledge of how scientific and technological studies are carried out. You will also have the opportunity to use sensors frequently used in human behaviour studies. If you want, you will also receive data collected (from you) in the study. Also, you will get the chance to contribute your own data to an important effort trying to generate data and potential solutions about the increased obesity and overweight prevalence across different European countries.
Create
Time to collect the data!
Students and their teachers can design and implement activities that correspond best to their needs. Here's an example:
The required data collection will include the following steps:
- Measuring your weight and height by your teacher. The specific date and place of this will be pre-arranged. You will be measured individually and your measurements will not be communicated to the rest of the participants.
- Installation of the BigO app in your device. The BigO app will become available from an external research website and after it is installed in your device will only activate through a code provided by your teachers. When you activate the app you will be asked to fill in a small number of questions about your usual eating and physical activity habits.
- Using the BigO app to take pictures of food advertisements you encounter during your daily life. During the BigO activities, you'll be asked to take pictures of as many food advertisements around you during day. If active, the app will upload those pictures to our servers automatically when your device connects to a Wi-Fi network. Please make sure that you do not include the faces of the people around you when you take the pictures.
- Using a smartwatch for as long as you feel comfortable during the BigO activities. The smartwatch will record GPS, physical activity and sleep-related data and will transmit them to your phone automatically. From there the data will be uploaded to research servers. You are kindly asked, if it feels comfortable, to wear the smartwatch for at least 2 school days and 1 weekend day during the BigO activities. You are also kindly asked to sleep while wearing the smartwatch for at least 3 nights during the BigO activities
At the end of the BigO activities, you will be asked to answer some questions about your experience while using the BigO app and the smartwatch.
Share
Finally, it's time to engage your parents, neighbours and in general, your local society!
We encourage you to move around and ask people questions about their eating and sleeping habits.
Please, take note of their answers, share them not only with your classmates but also with the wider community in the context of an open schooling activity and compare these data with your own data.