Brain Breaks Go To College

Abstract

As health education specialists, we are called to practice what we promote. American adult physical activity levels are low, and too much time is spent sedentary. New habits can be learned early in adult life in the higher education setting. Most time students and faculty spend in higher education learning environments is spent while sedentary—this norm must change. Brain breaks in formal learning environments have worked well in K-12 schools; they can be incorporated into higher education in order to reengage students and improve their academic achievement. Brain Breaks are short (2-5 minutes), movement-based activities to break-up prolonged periods of sitting by students, thus increasing physical activity. Health and health-related college courses provide an ideal platform to begin adding back in brain breaks and active learning strategies where there has traditionally been little to none.

The Effect of Active break on Autonomic Nervous Pattern Recognition of Learning States

“…For example, a 4-minute active break has a positive impact on classroom performance [16,25]. Active break is not only applicable to middle and primary school students, but also bene cial to college students [2,10]. For example, a 25-minute active break can improve the academic performance of college students [10].…”

“…10 showed the mean standard deviation (SD) of the RR interval features of certain learning state groups and the statistic test parameters.…”