EduCAC has started the year with the project “What do you bet?”, a proposal that goes deep into the context of video games and online gambling from the students’ experience. It results from the collaboration between the CAC through the eduCAC program, IDIBELL, and the Pathological Gambling Unit of the Bellvitge University Hospital.
On the one hand, “What do you bet?” studies upper secondary school (ESO) students’ habits related to video games and online gambling. On the other hand, the project performs an intervention in the classroom to promote critical and responsible consumption. The intervention is the didactic unit “What do you bet?”, created specifically for this project.
Two educational centres take part in the project: the Bellvitge Institute from Hospitalet de Llobregat and the Virolai School from Barcelona. Bboth of them are highly aware of the need to introduce media education in the student’s curriculum. They consider that the context of video games facilitates real and motivating situations to work on the necessary skills in the digital environment.
Now, a three-phased pilot test is being carried out in both centres. An initial pre-assessment phase with questionnaires including gambling habits, video game use, cognitive distortions, attitudes and social perceptions about gambling, as well as the impact of advertising and knowledge of bookmakers. An intervention phase in the classroom (didactic unit “What do you bet?”). And finally, a post-assessment phase, in which the students will answer the same questionnaires as in the initial phase.
Each school defined two groups of students: experimental and control groups. Both groups will answer the questionnaires, but the intervention phases will be carried out at different times. The experimental group has already started the intervention, which will last until March. Once it’s over, the intervention will take place with the control group. In this way, in the final phase, it will be possible to compare the results and check whether there have been changes related to the intervention program.
The initial pre-evaluation phase took place on January 11 and 14. The upper secondary school students participating in the study responded to the psychometric questionnaires with the advice of the experts from IDIBELL and the Hospital de Bellvitge.
Since January 17, the intervention phase is being developed with the class through the didactic unit “What do you bet?”. Its activities make proposals to incentivise the critical
analysis of the reality of the students to lead them towards self-knowledge and hence to a responsible consumption of video games and digital content.
Finally, in order to get the families’ engagement, informative sessions have been held where they have been explained the study in which their children are participating.