In touch with health: A blended learning scenario for sexual and skin health education in European schools

Background
Different countries; same problems: Adolescents all over the world deal with sexual and skin health, not knowing much about it. Making a difference in public health means developing opportunities for adolescents to get in touch with health topics in a supportive, motivating and challenging way. Therefore considering the changing information and communication patterns among youth is essential. Preconceiving that information and communication technologies have the potential to create more diverse and motivating ways of learning their use seems to be an auspicious way of health education in the 21^st century.

Objective
Based on Antonovsky and the Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion the projects’ objective is to strengthen personal resources for sexual and skin health (knowledge, competencies, attitudes, behaviour) of adolescents. Therefore the international blended learning scenario “in Touch with Health” combining traditional and e-learning was developed by a multidisciplinary team. After implementation in German, Italian and Romanian schools, the prototype is evaluated and optimized. The Scenario will be increase concerning content and languages.

Results
Results of a needs assessment, context analysis and literature study showed necessity of and students’ interest in innovative learning material focused on sexual and skin health but also demanded a flexible learning scenario due to heterogeneity in personal and contextual conditions. Based on these results a blended learning scenario was developed characterized by: module based information, different levels of informational complexity, possibilities for self-regulated and cooperative learning, instructions, various options for learning activities including small as well ass extensive projects and emotional motivation by narrative and interactive elements.

Conclusions
Multidisciplinary teamwork is essential in the design process of a health education scenario but also challenging. Existing project results show: blended learning offers various possibilities to create one European learning platform for health education in schools that takes into account all personal, educational and contextual differences.