Instructor weight, health characteristics and effecitve in online health classes

The importance of overall positive physical health has shown to improve cognitive functioning, which in turn provides effective teaching abilities. There is a concern that high health risk behaviors in faculty reflect a lower level of cognitive functioning that could decrease their effectiveness as an instructor in health-related classes – even in the online environment which eliminates the face-to-face element of teaching. Research has shown the unhealthy health educators are not effective in various work locales, including the university setting. Studies on teacher effectiveness have largely overlooked the online environment despite the emergence of numerous quality online universities. Therefore, this current research is breaking new ground in the areas of education, health promotion, and teaching and learning. This study – to commence in the spring 2015 with results expected by fall 2015 – will address the association between instructor weight and health status to student learning and teacher effectiveness in the online environment. It will compare the teaching effectiveness of instructors who pose high health risk behaviors with their lower risk counterparts as determined by select survey questions taken from the BRFSS and NHANES. It is expected that even when students do not visually see their professors (as in the online environment) student learning and teacher effectiveness are lower when the faculty member has poor health behaviors versus their healthier counterparts.