Promoting Health Knowledge Among University Students by Using Personal Biometric Information

Introduction

Bridging the know-do gap is one of the most important challenges for public health in this century. It also poses the greatest opportunity for strengthening health systems.

Health knowledge, or education, refers to the knowledge and understanding individual have about health-related issues. It is important to understand benefits for health and the causes of ill-health and recognize the extent to which they are vulnerable to, or at risk from, a health threat. In other words, knowledge is a necessary component of behavioral change .

Health knowledge is an important but not sufficient factor in order to provoke a behavioral change toward a healthier life style. Knowing that something is beneficial or a risk to your health and perceiving it as a chance or threat are not the same. Schwarzer proposes the Health Action Process Approach for helping to bridge the know - do gap underlining the importance of adoption, initiation, and maintenance of health behaviors conceived of as a structured process including a motivation phase and a volition phase. The proposed study fosters acquisition and maintenance of health behaviors like activity in form of amount of steps performed during a day, sleeping behavior and monitoring of the heart rate.

The context in which the described interactions between human beings and the wearable technology takes place, can be linked to learning concepts and instructional methods like knowledge building, situated, self-regulated and active learning. In situated learning it is important to create a meaning from the real activities of daily living where learning can also occur in an informal setting and connects prior knowledge to new contexts. According to recent reserach researchers, a selfregulated student is a student who is metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally engaged in its own learning processes and in achieving its own goals. Active learning refers to any instructional method that engages students (actively) in the learning process. Active learning requires students to do meaningful learning activities and to reflect what they are doing. Reserachers describe Knowledge building by an activity resulting in the creation or modification of so called public knowledge, knowledge that lives 'in the world' and is available to be worked on.