goFIT challenge gets clean bill of health

The University of Southampton’s goFIT activity and movement challenge has been recognised as an example of best practice by the European Network of Academic Sport Services (ENAS).

goFIT formed a central component of the ‘One Big Thing’ project from Imperial College London, which won the BEST Practice Award at the 2014 ENAS Conference in Lille, France this week.

The goFIT software platform and movement challenge aims to increase the well-being and physical activity of staff and students. The goal is to increase minutes of physical activity each week, which can be as easy as taking the stairs instead of the lift or getting off at a further bus stop and walking a bit more into work.

Professor m.c. schraefel from Electronics and Computer Science, who designed goFIT, said: “Our research is all about how we can design technology to help people connect with each other, and connect with better wellbeing practices. We’d be overjoyed to see every university in the UK and EU running a goFIT challenge - let’s make it happen.”

Following a successful trial at Southampton, Imperial College London, was the first institution to implement the initiative and incorporated it into their own wellbeing activities, which culminated with the One Big Thing ‘5K anyway’ event.

Neil Mosley, Director of Sport at Imperial College London, said: “We love goFIT - we support m.c.’s aspiration to have goFIT help create a health practice data picture of wellbeing in the UK. There’s not just the challenge; there’s great content there too - from how to videos to first person accounts of getting more fit. For us, we love how we can customise goFIT to promote our events and how it gives our movement events a real target to get people together.

“At the recent ENAS conference, with people who run sport programs from all over Europe, there was tremendous interest in using the goFIT platform to run challenges from Ireland to Portugal.”

goFIT connected with hundreds of Southampton students and some staff last year and it will be running again January 2015 at Southampton, Imperial College London and City University London. If your institution or organisation is interested in participating, please visit gofit.ac.uk or contact Professor schraefel at mc+gofit@ecs.soton.ac.uk and follow her on Twitter @mcphoo