Throughout one of my courses at CU Boulder, I remember a teacher would always give us some time to stretch at the halfway point of class because our lectures were around two hours long. At the end of the year, she had us take a survey on the stretching break she had given us. The results were surprising as one of the questions asked if students suffered from an injury or if they felt discomfort and 135 students out of the 150 claimed that they experienced one or the other. I personally suffered from a disc herniation due to a car accident and ever since then, I never could focus the same for such a long time in class because my lower back would start to hurt. In fact, research done on college students claimed that the sleepiness model confirms all students became increasingly more sleepy (less alert) over the duration of the 2.5 h class (Hosteng, Reichter, Simmering, & Carr, 2019). Moreover, almost 98% of the students claimed that they experienced significant sleepiness. Also, the results are more shocking as it was reported that students experiencing significant pain in the past year reported higher levels of discomfort entering class and reported significant discomfort after just 60 min of uninterrupted class time sitting (Hosteng et. Al, 2019). The important take away from this research is that these students who were in discomfort and pain had lower concentration levels and found it harder to focus on the lectures. The question then is, what ought to be done for these students?
As this became a concern to many universities throughout the nation, one university found the solution to this by providing desks that could be elevated. They first tested the cardiometabolic health of college students by monitoring students’ hearts while they utilized standing desks. The results were astounding as a standing desk in the classroom paradigm significantly improved cardiometabolic health in a cohort of university students (Butler, Ramos, Buchanan, & Dalleck, 2018). A continuous risk score assessment scale (MetS Z-score) was utilized to show that MetS z-score was significantly improved (P<0.05) during the 3 weeks of standing vs 3 weeks of sitting (Butler et. Al, 2018). After taking in all this data and how it improved cardiometabolic health and the attention span of students, should standing desks be implicated in universities?
Butler, K. M., Ramos, J. S., Buchanan, C. A., & Dalleck, L. C. (2018). Can reducing sitting time in the university setting improve the cardiometabolic health of college students?. Diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity : targets and therapy, 11, 603–610. https://doi.org/10.2147/DMSO.S179590
Hosteng, K. R., Reichter, A. P., Simmering, J. E., & Carr, L. J. (2019). Uninterrupted Classroom Sitting is Associated with Increased Discomfort and Sleepiness Among College Students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(14), 2498. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16142498
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