Teaching Healthy Computing Skills to High School Students via Participatory Ergonomics

Abstract

When today's students graduate from college and start their first job, many have close to twenty years of computer use exposure and some of them also have discomfort associated with this exposure. This discomfort may be due, in part, to a lack of training, from schools or other sources, in healthy computing habits (such as taking breaks, reducing awkward postures and postural fixity, etc.). A long-term goal of this line of research is to improve the health of students. In this study students were introduced to the concept and principles of healthy computing. The specific aim of this study was to recruit a small group of students to learn, in a participatory fashion, about healthy computing and then to assist them to develop means for effectively conveying their knowledge to other students. The objective of this paper is to explain the methodology that was utilized in the study and to provide evidence of its effectiveness.