To mold encourage students to become fitter for AY 2012-2013, FITWELL (Fitness and Wellness), a two-unit Physical Education (PE) course, was introduced to the DLSU 112 curricula.
FITWELL is a Physical Education course that aims to create healthy and fit students amidst work from academics and organizations. Aside from the usual class sessions, students would now receive weekly aerobic and cardiovascular exercises and fitness tests to accomplish every week.
For this month’s issue, The LaSallian conducted a survey of 100 frosh respondents to evaluate FITWELL and its significance to the professors and students alike.
Students’ satisfaction
Course satisfaction entails that the students’ educational and physical needs and expectations toward the course were met.
Aside from FITWELL, the University is also offering the previous three other PE courses, which are FTTEAMS for team sports, FTDANCE for dance and FTSPORT for individual or dual sports. Altogether, these courses aim to develop a variety of body conditioning, rhythmic activities, motor and movement skills, and social recreation games.
Student, Alan Ishmael Castro, (I, MME), believes that every Lasallian frosh should take fitness and wellness first before engaging in other activities such as sports and dance in future PE courses.
“It is critical to keep ourselves fit and through this specific course, we are taught the proper ways to stay fit; sports is just one thing, but proper aerobics and physical fitness exercises are critical.”
On the other hand, some of the students think otherwise, and claim that there is no need to study fitness and wellness, particularly aerobics, which they believe makes the course quite unnecessary to take up in college..
An AB-OCM student who opted not to be named, claimed that FITWELL features a more comprehensive approach compared to high school sharing, “It enabled me to recap and refresh my memory of what I have already learned back in high school, and the exercises were more extreme compared to what I had back then.”
Aside from issues that concern the content of the course, there have been numerous reports that some classes received free cuts because of the absence of some professors.
“Most of our classes were free cuts, and whenever we do have class, we don’t really do much,” claimed an BS-AEC student.
Aftermath
The results of The LaSallian’s interviews are as follows:
Of the 100 students surveyed, 71 students shared that FITWELL has helped them become physically fit. Many cited that the professors played a major role in inspiring the students to live a physically and mentally fit lifestyle.
“A sound mind needs a sound body, that’s why we should exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle,” Luis Miguel Dator (I, AE-MGT) quipped.
DLSU Judo Team Head Coach Sam Bernales who is also a member of the PE faculty, is glad that DLSU has introduced a fitness and wellness course, explaining, “FITWELL will help a student become a better individual. It can also help him/her in his/her studies by making him/her fit in any activities in and out of the classroom.”
Some students, however, posit that a three-hour fitness session is not sufficient to keep them fit.
For better or worse
Last August 18, the PE department held a culminating activity for all its FITWELL classes; the program centered on aerobics.
The FITWELL classes showed their aerobic numbers to the PE faculty and other members of the DLSU community. Many received the program with enthusiasm though some believe that there is still room for improvement. Since FITWELL is a new course, some students find that the course syllabus and teaching methods need to be evaluated as well.
