Sustaining Pre-Service Teachers’ Virtual Engagement in a Health Education Course through Interactive Buzz Sessions

Abstract

Distance learning manifested an increasing growth in the field of higher education. Although it may not be exactly comparable to a residential face-to-face encounter, considering the engagement of the students in learning within a virtual context is still significant. Thus, this action research was conducted to sustain the level of virtual engagement among undergraduate teacher education students specializing in Physical Education when interactive buzz breaks are introduced in their online synchronous sessions. This study utilized a mixed-method collaborative action research approach. The participants included 48 second-year Bachelor of Physical Education (BPEd) students enrolled in the course, “Drug Education, Consumer Health, and Nutrition”, from a teacher education institution (TEI) in Central Luzon, Philippines during the second semester of the academic year 2021-2022. Multiple sources of data were collected and analyzed which included teacher’s observation notes, Student Engagement Survey Questionnaire, and reflective journals. Five (5) interactive buzz break activities were implemented using the “Wordwall” as an intervention within twelve synchronous sessions. The survey questionnaire was administered before (pre-assessment) and after (post-assessment) the intervention to describe the students’ level of virtual engagement. Results of the quantitative phase revealed that there is a high level of students’ behavioral, cognitive, and emotional virtual engagement before and after the strategy. The qualitative phase further promoted these results to reveal the remarkable experiences encountered by students during the intervention implementation that contributed to sustaining their virtual engagement. The derived results and findings posit that administering various interactive buzz break activities with the utilization of various educational platforms synchronously and asynchronously may sustain and further improve students’ virtual engagement.

Fostering Pre-service Physical Educators’ Retention of Concepts in a Professional Education Course Using Moneypoly Game

“…To fully identify the succession of teaching strategies, students' active participation is the key to employing learning. Most teachers tend to create several approaches just to cater to all learners' needs specifically through their academic engagement (Dizon et al, 2022). According to Khan et al (2017), designing the course can be an important tool to actively engage students with the best practices through the delivery of the topic.…”

Gamification in a Virtual Ecology (GIVE): Enhancing Classroom Engagement in Physical Education among Senior High School Students

“…On the other hand, gamification has been recognized in the Philippine educational sector as one of the supplementary tools in accommodating the diverse learning demands of Filipino learners, bringing up an array of ways for students to engage and interact with the evolving world. Gamification provides a unique alternative to raise and improve the learners' engagement, productivity, competence, enthusiasm, personality, and diverse learning outcomes (Delizo et al, 2019;Dizon et al, 2022;Lanuza, 2020;Tolentino et al, 2018;Tolentino & Roleda, 2019). As determined by Tolentino et al (2018) gamification enhanced high school students' interest, engagement, and performance in their various subjects significantly.…”

“…The gamified learning approach implies a unique strategy for improving and enhancing learners' academic performance. Also, Dizon et al (2022) gamified instruction in their health education course using "Wordwall" which they called interactive buzz sessions to sustain pre-service teachers' engagement in a virtual platform.…”