28th May 2016

Health Education: Inquiry project

How has the Inquiry Project experience advanced my understandings of what good
health education might be and why?
The inquiry project experience helped advance my understandings of what good
health education is and taught me a range of different processes that can be used for
the teaching process. Our inquiry project was about researching and creating
awareness about the dangers of drugs. In my group project we used and facilitated a
variety of processes, which help teach children about health education. Surveys,
talking, researching, making the video and the presentation to our class were the
processes my group used and helped advance my own understanding of what good
health education is. This essay will look at the different types of health education we
have explored this semester. To answer the question about what good health
education is, the topics that were studied in health this semester, our tutor assigning
us this specific project, what processes we used as a group and our presentation to
the class, will all be focused on.
Throughout this semester a lot of content and learning processes have been included
to teach us what health education is. I feel as though my understanding has changed
drastically and I now have a more diverse perception of the types of topics health
incorporates. Prior to undertaking this course, I thought health was simply related to
our personal health. In the first class, as one of the learning processes, we were asked
to draw what we thought health was. Immediately I drew, the environment, healthy
food, exercise and people. I learnt that Indigenous Health, gender, health promotion,
power and politics are also all part of health education and play an important role on
our perception of health. In our last class we repeated this process and through my
drawings it was obvious how much my understanding of what health was had
expanded. I feel as though this process was very efficient and got me to reflect and
understand how and where my understanding for health had changed. Each week my
tutor used a variety of different processes to keep us interested and actively
participating to educate us about different aspects of health. The process of group
work I found to be very effective. Each week we sat in small table groups and worked
together on different activities. Group work is a very efficient way of learning and I felt
comfortable talking about health in smaller groups rather than as a whole class. A less
effective learning process for me was when we would all sit in a group as a class and
discuss answers. I felt as though this wasnt as effective for me as I always felt
pressured to have the right answer. Due to the class being 3 hours long, I feel as
though there needed to be more content covered per class. Only one or two different
activities were usually done each week and I feel as though if it were split into smaller
sections my attention span would be greater and I would stay more focused.
This being our final assessment, our tutors assigned us this project and let us choose
our own groups and topic. Originally this was quite daunting as I felt there was little
guidance on what we were required to do. As a group we used the learning process of
researching and talking to help us decide what we wanted to focus on. The learning
process we used was group work. Working in a group is quite challenging at times,
due to the fact every member was at UNI on different days and times, it made it very
difficult for us all to organise a time to meet up and work on the assignment together.
Unfortunately, one of the group members wasnt there for the making of the video,
however they had their input of research and ideas and communicated with the rest of
the group via email to ensure they equally contributed to the assignment. Although
group assignments are challenging for various reasons, they allow a range of ideas
and opinions to be expressed and collaborated and are a highly effective way of
teaching and understanding health education. An improvement for this assignment,

28th May 2016

Health Education: Inquiry project
which wouldve helped with designing our video and writing this report, wouldve
being given a criteria sheet. I found it particularly difficult not knowing exactly what
was expected of us for our presentation and not knowing whether a video and survey
was enough work for the grade we wanted to achieve. This project was a useful and
effective tool for learning about health education. I learnt myself about the processes
that are involved in creating such a project and I learnt how to educate others on
health issues.
Our health education is very important and through our group project we have learnt
ourselves and taught others about health. Our group decided to base our inquiry
project on the dangers of drugs. With the recent stereo sonic deaths in Australia, we
were all deeply affected and wanted to warn other young people of the dangers. A
variety of different learning processes were used throughout our presentation to show
the changing of health education. The first learning process was researching.
Researching is a critical stage in any project. Once we discovered that ecstasy was the
most common party drug we focused solely on retrieving information based around
this drug. Making the video posed many challenges and took a lot longer than
originally anticipated. We decided to use PowerPoint to create the video and doing so
it taught me a lot about technology and how to add in background music and effects.
Showing a film is an effective means of health education. Our film that we created was
very engaging; with the audio and visual interaction the students had something to
focus on whilst interpreting the information. The process of creating and handing out
surveys posed to be highly beneficial for us to gain an understanding of what the
video taught them about drugs and how that affected their understanding of health
education. The results from the survey showed 97% of students were affected
emotionally, as the music, pictures and real life stories about other teenagers made
them connect and imagine themselves in that situation. Again 97% responded saying
they learnt something from our film. Unfortunately only 50% of students said the
video changed their perspective on party drugs, with 47% saying the video didnt
impact their views on party drugs and 3% were unsure. It has been proven that visual
learning makes it easier to interpret information and more likely to remember it
(Kouyoumdjian 2012). The process of deciding the make a video was an easy decision
for our group as we all agreed that learning visually was most effective for all of us to
retain the information. The survey shows that this theory is correct and I am pleased
with the results we received. The inquiry project advanced my understandings of what
good health education is through the making and use of the film.
The last type of health education was educating the class on what we had learnt. I
learnt about the key elements of how to present to a class and the effective strategies
to use. To teach health education there needs to be a lot of interaction. I learnt a lot
from the other groups presentations due to them having activities which kept the
audience engaged. To improve our presentation I feel we needed more interaction
with the audience. The process of using surveys was created to help facilitate a
discussion afterwards and to ensure the audience was paying attention. The same
surveys were handed out to our peers in our class to determine whether the effect of
the film would be the same as those on year 12 students. Reviewing the results, it was
shown that nowhere near as many people in our class were affected as deeply as the
students we initially showed it to at the school. I feel as though the target audience of
year 12s was appropriate for our video and due to the results from our class survey it
was not as effective for the older age group. Our surveys were very simple as we
wanted direct answers from students and know from our own experience people dont
like answering long survey questions, which is why we decided to go with simple, yes
or no questions. To improve the survey we could include more detailed questions to
get a more in depth response and better analysis.

28th May 2016

Health Education: Inquiry project

My inquiry project experience has helped shaped my understanding of what good

health education is with focusing on the four types of health education that was
covered throughout the semester. The weekly health classes added knowledge about
the different aspects of health and contributed to creating a successful project. The
learning processes of surveys, researching and creating the video helped me expand
my own knowledge and teach others in the presentation to the class. I feel that good
health education is using a variety of different learning processes and keeping the
class engaged with valid and important information.
Word count: 1507

Reference List
Germov, J. (2014). Second Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology (5th ed.).
Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Kouyoumdjian H, 2012, Psychology Today, Learning through Visuals, viewed 10th June
2016, < https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201207/learningthrough-visuals>