MURFREESBORO — The
25 students in MTSU professor Mary Beth Asbury’s organizational communication
class have a “healthy” appreciation for experiential learning after spending
the spring semester researching, planning and finally executing a campus Health
Fair to share what they’ve learned.
Held in the atrium of the Student Union in April, the health
fair offered students in the Health Campaigns Experiential Learning class a hands-on
opportunity to publicly showcase the knowledge gained during the class, while
also sharing information with fellow MTSU students that could have a positive
impact on their lives.
Now in its eighth year, the EXL program at MTSU is designed
to enhance student learning through practical experiences in their fields of
study beyond the traditional classroom and that engage the student directly in
service. Over 200 courses are now approved as EXL courses throughout the
university.
As instructor, Asbury divided her EXL class into five teams
of five. Each team was charged with thoroughly researching a topic, including
conducting Institutional Review Board or IRB surveys of MTSU students to get
feedback. Team topics included positive body image, the benefits of taking
vitamins, healthy eating strategies, campus safety awareness and combatting binge
drinking on college campuses.
The teams set up display booths inside the Student Union at
which they discussed their findings with passing students, faculty and staff
while also offering them informational brochures, food samples, water bottles,
vitamin supplements and various other giveaway items to reinforce the message
they sought to drive home.
Maria Rojano, a sophomore graphic design major from
Nashville by way of Venezuela, was among the many students who stopped by the
fair and shared her thoughts on her visit to the healthy eating booth.
“I like to learn about healthier options. I’m trying to
switch my eating to a healthier way,” Rojano said. “By informing myself about
it, I not only get to learn personally, but I can help others.”
After trying out some of the fruit-infused water samples,
she noted that the grapefruit-flavored water was a bit too strong for her
taste, but the lemon and cucumber sample “was very soothing.”
That was good news to Starlethia Hicks, a junior
organizational communication major from Nashville, and one of the team members
for the healthy eating booth. Hicks said she had always thought that eating
healthy “was too expensive,” but her group’s research on this project led to a
different conclusion.
The student team’s survey found that 82 percent of
respondents felt that “eating healthy is difficult and pricey,” but 75 percent
of students indicated they wanted to eat healthier. So she and fellow team
members researched and found economical but tasty alternatives to traditional
eating habits of college students.
One example of a heavy dessert alternative was frozen
bananas with peanut butter. Not only does it taste good, it’s a great source of
protein, Hicks said.
Leslie Kelly, a senior public relations major from Santa Fe,
Tennessee, rattled off a number of reasons her team’s topic of positive body
image was an important issue to research and discuss.
“It starts in young kids because they see people on TV …
models, actors, and they think that’s how they’re supposed to look,” she said.
“We really want to promote loving yourself as you are. There are factors that
we have no control over that affect the way you look.”
The group did a survey of MTSU students that found 43
percent of responding students would change one thing about themselves on a
daily basis, a finding Kelly called “staggering.” Students had to keep journals
about their class experience, a requirement that added a deeper level of
collective understanding once the project was completed.
“I think we as a group learned a lot, and we were very
surprised by some of the things we learned,” Kelly said.
The overall purpose of the Health Fair project was to help
educate the public about the health issues students have learned about in the
class, Asbury said. Students were instructed to choose a health-related topic “that
they were passionate about” and share that with the campus body.
The mission of the class is to educate students about health
communications — what messages are people receiving about health and what
messages are people giving out, Asbury added.
“A lot of times, we assume that we know how to talk to
doctors or doctors know how to talk to us, or we understand the messages we
receive about our bodies or food … this class is to educate generally about
health communications,” she said.
“How can we best talk to health professionals to get the
most out of those interactions?”
As part of the Health Fair project, students created slogans
and developed creative ways of sharing what they learned with other students. By
hosting a health fair, Asbury’s students had to demonstrate that they truly
understood the topic well enough to educate others about it, and that they could
analyze an audience properly in order to craft effective messaging.
Students also gained an understanding of the promotional
aspect involved in being a health professional, such as participating in the
many health fairs that are held in communities throughout the state, nation and
world.
Dustin Parker, a junior organizational communication major
from Smyrna, Tennessee, said the class project gave him and his classmates real
world experience in orchestrating and participating in such an event.
“It’s one thing to be at a health fair, but it’s another
thing to actually put one on, almost from nothing,” Parker said. “I want to go
into to some sort of health field communication, so this class was perfect for
me.”
Organizational Communication is a major within the
Department of Speech and Theatre in the College of Liberal Arts. For more
information, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/orgcomm/index.php.
Several courses in the Organizational Communication major are
experiential learning courses (EXL) and many majors have graduated as EXL
scholars. For more information about the EXL Scholars Program, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/exl/index.php.
No comments:
Post a Comment