Innovative educational technologies for healthy lifestyle promotion in student communities

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PhD, Associate Professor T.I. Chedova1
PhD, Associate Professor G.A. Gavronina1
1Perm State National Research University, Perm

Keywords: physical education disciplines, innovative educational technologies, university students, healthy lifestyle.

Background. The academic physical education system reforms give a special priority to the healthy lifestyle cultivation aspects of the modern interactive educational technologies to complement the traditional physical education methods [1-6]. The interactive educational technologies are also considered one of the core instruments for successful personality socializing process of the future professionals.
Objective of the study was to analyze benefits of a target healthy lifestyle cultivating interactive educational technologies applied in the theoretical academic physical education.
Methods and structure of the study. We summarized the practical interactive educational technologies application experience accumulated by the national academic educational system to offer a set of active and interactive theoretical physical education method to complement the traditional physical education service. Benefits of the new interactive theoretical physical education tools were rated by the educational monitoring and questionnaire surveys prior to and after the academic year of 2017-18. Sampled for the survey to analyze the students’ interest in the new interactive theoretical physical education workshops were the 2-3-year students of the economics, law, biological, historical and geological university departments (n=132). 
Results and discussion. The new interactive theoretical physical education tools were found to boost the students’ interest in the education materials; facilitate accumulation of practical experience via teamwork in workshops; jointly explore and find creative solutions for the problems offered by the teacher; and develop due tolerance and respect in communication. We applied the following interactive theoretical physical education tools in the theoretical physical education workshops.
Case study technologies were used to develop the basic personality qualities necessary for the theoretical physical education knowledge being successfully implemented in practice. The case analysis was meant to facilitate the specific competence building process with a special attention to the personality qualities in the context of the healthy lifestyle values and priorities and solutions to specific problem. The problems for the case studies were selected to imply a wide variety of solutions so that to help students master their own position defending logics and skills with the ability to fully mobilize the general cultural and professional competences. The case study technology was found beneficial for the efforts to build a variety of high valued personality qualities including responsibility, tolerance and respect in the discussions.
Project technology was applied to help the students duly design and manage their own competency building systems as required by the personality traits, needs and gifts. The project technology was applied in the training process to cultivate the interpersonal student-teacher dialogue and cooperation. We found that one of the great benefits of the project technology is the student independence and initiative developing component – of particular importance for our interactive theoretical physical education method testing experiment on the whole and its health protection and improvement aspects in particular.
Discussion and denotation tools were used in the interactive theoretical physical education method to facilitate the students’ communication and speaking culture development process with a special attention to the individual creativity, tolerance and responsibility development aspects. The discussions and denotation exercises included, for example, the My Present Lifestyle and My Desired Lifestyle topics analyzed in focus groups.
Multimedia technologies were used in the interactive theoretical physical education method to cope with the scope and time limitations in the communication process to effectively mine the required information for progress.
Specific trainings were designed to effectively model specific life situations for discussions and analyses. The interactive theoretical physical education method testing experiment gave a special priority in such trainings to the communication and relationship building culture in the healthy lifestyle development context for it is known to often challenging for this age group. Thus the assays My Present Lifestyle helped the students’ analyze the key personality progress issues and barriers for the progress in the context of the healthy lifestyle building efforts and take responsibility for their own choice and solutions in one or another specific life situation.
Reverse class technology was used in the interactive theoretical physical education method to facilitate the students’ progress in the self-reliant determined working capacity and effective learning methods with the ability to fast mine and analyze the key information for practical solutions.
And the scoring and rating system was used in the interactive theoretical physical education method to advance the students’ motivations for the active and persistent learning process for the whole academic year to master the key physical education theory fundamentals and skills and develop the high-quality versatile general cultural and professional competences.
The students’ interest in the new interactive theoretical physical education method and its healthy lifestyle building aspects was tested on a 5-point scale as follows: 1 point – unnecessary; 2 points – rather unnecessary than not; 3 points – rather necessary than not; 4 points – necessary; and 5 points – very necessary.
The pre-experimental tests found most of the sample (63.32 %) feeling the new interactive theoretical physical education workshops being unlikely necessary for the progress. The post-experimental tests found most of the sample (91.65%) believing that the workshops facilitated their healthy lifestyle cultivation efforts and gave the necessary knowledge for progress. Most popular topics of the workshops included ‘Physical training tools in the academic physical education service’, ‘Healthy lifestyle cultivating physical education service tools’ and ‘Health tests and self-tests in the academic physical education and sports’.
Conclusion. The new interactive theoretical physical education method with its focused didactic technologies was tested beneficial versus the traditional physical education service tools, particularly in the students’ healthy lifestyle cultivation and the relevant personality qualities development domain. The academic efforts to develop the students’ health culture shall be designed on a systemic, uninterrupted and integrated basis, with the progress supported by a system of mental and physical progress tests to help every student master the individual health protection and improvement strategy design and management methods.

References

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Corresponding author: tania.chedova@yandex.ru

Abstract
The article analyzes the growing need for innovative educational technologies for healthy lifestyle promotion in student communities as required to meet the modern challenges, in the context of the growing priority given to the health values and motivations by the education system in its efforts to facilitate the students’ physical progress and help them attain the life goals. The study underlines the need for improvements in the academic theoretical and practical physical education and healthy lifestyle promotion initiatives, with a special emphasis on the health workshops within the valid physical education curricula to effectively help the students make progress in the academic physical education and sport and develop their own healthy lifestyles based on the growing health values, motivations and the relevant personality qualities critical for the social agenda and professional careers. These academic policies and practices need to be facilitated by the modern innovative education technologies with interactive education modules. The study reports the practical experience of healthy lifestyle encouragement innovative educational technologies tested in the theoretical physical education course at Perm State University.