Build A Baby
Developed for The Novo Nordisk Foundation
The challenge
The Novo Nordisk Foundation’s learning unit, LIFE, makes learning packages for the oldest classes in the primary and lower secondary school on scientific topics. For a course on cancer and heredity, they had to use a game that could focus on key learning points about genetics while having fun. Furthermore, it should be easy to run in a school class.
The solution
In BUILD A BABY, students must put together a “baby” of selected genes and then expose them to different life choices. The choices provide quality of life depending on how well they match the babies’ genetic predisposition, but along the way there is also the possibility of getting rare, genetic diseases, just as the babies can develop cancer – again depending on life choices and predisposition. The game ends with the players’ babies – who are now adults – having babies with each other to emphasise how genes for e.g. red hair, hereditary diseases, and eye color are inherited.
The result
After numerous tests with school students, the board game is ready to be rolled out in one of LIFE’s learning packages. Here it will be part of a longer course adapted to the common goals of the primary and lower secondary school.
