Assessing Student Perspectives of UBC’s ‘Movement Breaks’ Service in the Classroom
Creators: name: Cantarella, Egidio
name: Cossarini, Claire
name: Fashina-Bombata, Hassy
name: Hillier, Courtney
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2022

description: Our group studied and gathered data assessing the awareness of UBC undergraduate students on the ‘Movement Breaks’ service offered on campus. Our purpose was to gather data on the current engagement and use of UBC’s ‘Movement Breaks’ service to answer our main research question - how do we increase the awareness of the importance of UBC’s ‘Movement Breaks’ service? Other research questions we created included; have UBC undergraduate students heard of and/or participated in ‘Movement Breaks’, what faculties are engaging in ‘Movement Breaks’, and would UBC undergraduate students advocate for ‘Movement Breaks’, to be implemented across campus? Our research was important in understanding what faculties and year levels were/were not engaging in ‘Movement Breaks’ to grasp a stronger discernment as to how it’s delivered and to who it should be delivered to. Through an online Qualtrics survey, we asked quantitative and qualitative questions that pondered 74 participants' awareness, engagement and satisfaction level of the ‘Movement Breaks’ service on campus. From the data collected using the online survey, we utilized descriptive statistics to analyze and present our quantitative data. Additionally, we utilized inferential statistics for our qualitative data to draw conclusions from the participant responses. After examining the data, we arrived at our findings which informed us of the awareness and engagement levels of the ‘Movement Breaks’ service in classrooms on campus. To elaborate, the majority of respondents noted they had neither heard of nor engaged in a ‘Movement Break’ in class, with the percent of those who had heard of the service being 31% and those who had engaged being 35%. Of the participants who engaged in a ‘Movement Break’, 70% enjoyed them and when asked if they would advocate to have them implemented across campus, 91% said yes. In addition, the majority of people (91%) who responded to our survey - whether they engaged in the service or not - noted that they liked the idea of a brief ‘Movement Break’. In regards to those who hadn’t engaged in a ‘Movement Break’, the majority said they would want to in the future. When questioned about the quality of the ‘Movement Breaks’ service currently offered, majority of participants chose ‘okay’ and when asked about the services’ accessibility, 47% said it was inaccessible. This led us to our recommendations to which we suggested changing the current ‘Movement Breaks’ service to be sufficient for those with physical disabilities and who may be in wheelchairs. Through ideas such as seated stretches, meditation, and breathing exercises, the ‘Movement Breaks’ service could be accessible for people of all abilities. We also suggested making ‘Movement Breaks’ mandatory in lower level classes to encourage the building of good movement habits as supported by our findings of them being predominantly engaged in upper level classes. Although, our research could be limited here as we are all upper year varsity athletes and sent it to our social groups which comprise mostly of other upper level athletes or non-athletes, meaning our data could be biased in that sense. Despite this, the overall consensus with our data was that most participants had not heard of or engaged in a ‘Movement Break’, but would advocate for having them implemented across campus. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”