Building Healthy Food Habits among Secondary School Students
With an initial interest in improving eating habits among secondary school students, the Capstone team collaborated with the Health Promotion Board (HPB) to discuss how the Capstone project could be beneficial to both parties— for the team to apply academic theory to an area of interest to them, and for HPB to get some insights into HPB’s Healthy Meals in School Program that was newly introduced to Clementi Town Secondary School’s (CTSS) canteen. The Capstone team conducted informal interviews with the CTSS students, staff, and canteen vendors to develop a survey to better understand the fruit eating habits at the canteen. In response to the survey results, the team piloted an intervention at the CTSS canteen to increase fruit consumption, using pre and post surveys to evaluate the intervention. A report of the survey results (including reasons why students consume/do not consume fruits, students’ perceptions about recommended fruit intake, and social norms around the issue), along with recommendations for ways forward were prepared for CTSS and HPB.
Reflections from Capstone team members
“The Capstone project is nothing like other school projects because we got complete freedom to decide the scope, nature and design of the project by ourselves. This was a brilliant learning opportunity, as we had to strike a balance between classroom theory and real world constraints while ensuring our project was a meaningful and impactful venture. I hardly thought I could apply the behavioural economics theory I learned in class to a school canteen- but the Capstone taught me otherwise!”
– Drishti Baid, Year 2, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
“The Capstone is an amazing opportunity to work hand-in-hand with fellow CAPTains in an academics-based project. Through our Capstone project, we were able to experience hands-on the complete process of idea generation to planning and execution. It also provided a valuable opportunity for CAPTains of different faculties with multiple perspectives to work together on a real world topic. It was particularly intriguing for me as the topic my group was working in was in the field of Public Health. I learned something new every day throughout my entire Capstone journey.”
– Tio Yee Jen, Year 2, School of Computing
