Assignment 1 (Group): Learning Design Blueprint

Group Members:

Marco Chong, Marsha Chan, Chase Brown, Zheng Qiao Zhong, Hao Jiang

Topic

Teaching Self-care to Freshman Students

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Overview of the Topic

Self-care is an essential part of becoming a well-rounded student, that often gets left behind. Two integral aspects of self-care reside in maintaining and improving physical and emotional wellness. The foundation of physical self-care promotes overall well-being. Physical self-care depends on daily exercises, sleep time, and what we eat. Regular exercise enhances cardiovascular health, strengthens muscles, and boosts mental well-being (Warburton et al., 2006). Furthermore, adequate sleep is crucial for cognitive function, emotional regulation, and physical health, helping reduce the risk of chronic diseases (Hirshkowitz et al., 2015). Also, proper nutrition, including a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, supports physical health and prevents nutritional deficiencies (Micha et al., 2017). First-year students often experience a lack of guidance from their guardians for the first time. It can lead to the neglect of essential self-care practices. Our goal is to promote and navigate essential resources for freshmen.

Emotional self-care involves any strategies that can be used to help people manage their emotions and feelings. It is important to direct efforts toward maintaining emotional wellness as academic research shows positive feelings of enjoyment will help university freshmen foster skills such as deep learning, self-regulation, and motivation (Earl, 2024). Similarly, a study by Webster and Hadwin (2015) showed that first-year students face a lot of unfamiliar difficulties, thus giving students the tools to regulate and monitor their emotions through self-care is a useful skill to offer freshman university students. 

Common Misconceptions

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There is a common misconception about physical self-care. People believe that doing more exercise is beneficial to our physical health. However, excessive exercise can have numerous negative outcomes on an individual’s physical health such as burnout, joint and muscle pain, mental health concerns, or chronic fatigue. Therefore approaching physical health with a mindset for moderation and listening to one’s body is the best approach to maintain physical wellness across the lifespan.

The most common misunderstanding of emotional self-care is that a lot of people believe emotional self-care is having some luxury activities or indulging themselves. However, emotional self-care is not just a temporary relaxation; it takes a long time to focus on emotional health management, such as building supportive relationships with friends or doing some emotional regulation.

Rationale for Developing Learning Resources based on this Topic

University is a critical time for forming lifelong habits, making it ideal to teach freshmen effective physical self-care. Promoting regular exercise, balanced nutrition, and adequate rest sets a foundation for lasting physical and mental well-being. This proactive approach reduces the risk of chronic diseases and enhances resilience, ensuring a better quality of life beyond university.

University freshmen usually face a lot of challenges since they will have a lot of different pressures from the new environment, and it is also an important period for emotional and psychological changes. Therefore, learning emotional self-care is a valuable class for freshmen to succeed in university. The reason this topic interests us is that it will help freshmen better manage their emotions, providing them with useful life skills to achieve a balance between happiness and pressure in their academic and daily lives.

Learning Design Plan

Photo by Med Badr Chemmaoui on Unsplash

Big Ideas

• Comprehensive wellness: understanding the interconnectedness between emotional and physical well-being in achieving holistic wellness. Comprehending that the self-care needed to enhance emotional wellness may be different than what is required to improve physical wellness thus urging the individual to place focus on finding unique practices that elicit success in both areas of wellness independently. 

• Self-management and time-management skills: developing the ability to implement and adapt effective self-care strategies to align with their current lifestyle. Fostering coping strategies that allow individuals to shift their self-care strategies to reflect their varying needs at that time through the inconsistencies of daily life. 

Essential Questions

• What is self-care and how can it be implemented in an academic setting?
• What are some strategies of self-care that improve physical wellness? 
• What are some strategies of self-care that enhance emotional well-being?
• How does an individual recognize when they may need to shift their self-care strategies to meet their changing needs?

Course Learning Outcomes

• Assess the efficacy of their self-care plans
• Create personalized self-care strategies that reflect the individual’s lifestyle and strengths
• Ability to reflect on the physical and emotional growth and learning that has taken place through their self-care
• Utilizing problem-solving skills to recognize and combat challenges that may stand in the way of pursuing or maintaining self-care practices. 

Proficiency Indicator

• Ability to identify and recommend unique self-care practices that promote holistic health
• Develops a personalized schedule that incorporates self-care into their daily life.
• Identifies and reflects upon possible challenges that could limit the positive impacts of self-care on their emotional and physical wellness. 

Summative Assessment

• Our group plans to use final reflection as a summative assessment tool, including reflection on self-care and feedback for the class. The main objective is to allow students to analyze different types of self-care strategies and effectively apply various approaches to their emotional and physical wellness.
• We aim to help them understand the surrounding resources and lead them to academic success.

Formative Learning Activities

The setting of the lesson: at the beach or outdoor area 

• Check-in meditation: Relaxation 
• Stress level test: Rate their stress level on a scale of 1 to 10. We aim to analyze the level of stress and raise their awareness of their stress and emotions.
• Wellness mind map: Allow students to briefly write down their concerns and self-care strategies. The purpose is to emphasize the importance of self-care, encouraging self-awareness, and developing coping mechanisms. It also helps students to explore different ways to manage stress and apply self-care.
• Self-care Schedule: Ask students to include some self-care activities in their daily lives. 

List of Resources

Textbooks

https://collection.bccampus.ca/textbooks/university-success-university-of-saskatchewan-356/

Scholarly Articles

Futch, W., Gordon, N. S., & Gerdes, A. C. (2023). Student wellness: Interest and program ideas & pilot of a student wellness program. Journal of American College Health, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2023.2214241

Haskett, M. E., Majumder, S., Kotter- Grühn, D., & Gutierrez, I. (2021). The role of university students’ wellness in links between homelessness, food insecurity, and academic success. Journal of Social Distress and Homeless, 30(1), 59–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/10530789.2020.1733815

Grey Literature

Technology Tools

Home

Project Plan

Zheng Qiao Zhong: Overview of the Topic 1st half

Hao Jiang: Overview of the Topic 2nd half

Chase Brown: Learning Design Plan 1st half

Marsha Chan: Learning Design Plan 2nd half

Marco Chong: Editing, List of Resources

Our group used Instagram and Zoom for discussion.

References

Earl, S. R., Bishop, D., Miller, K., Davison, E., & Pickerell, L. (2024). First‐year students’ achievement emotions at university: A cluster analytic approach to understand variability in attendance and attainment. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2), 367–386. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12650

Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S. M., Alessi, C., Bruni, O., DonCarlos, L., Hazen, N., Herman, J., Katz, E. S., Kheirandish-Gozal, L., Neubauer, D. N., O’Donnell, A. E., Ohayon, M., Peever, J., Rawding, R., Sachdeva, R. C., Setters, B., Vitiello, M. V., Ware, J. C., & Adams Hillard, P. J. (2015). National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health, 1(1), 40–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010

Micha, R., Peñalvo, J. L., Cudhea, F., Imamura, F., Rehm, C. D., & Mozaffarian, D. (2017). Association Between Dietary Factors and Mortality From Heart Disease, Stroke, and Type 2 Diabetes in the United States. JAMA, 317(9), 912. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.0947

Warburton, D. E. R., Nicol, C. W., & Bredin, S. S. D. (2006). Health Benefits of Physical activity: the Evidence. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 174(6), 801–809. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1402378/

Webster, E.A., & Hadwin, A.F. (2015). Emotions and emotion regulation in undergraduate studying: examining students’ reports from a self-regulated learning perspective. Educational Psychology, 35(7), 794-818. doi: 10.1080/01443410.2014.895292