Final answer:
To create the desired while loop, the student should check if user_num is greater than or equal to 1, then divide by 2 and print the result in each iteration. The loop continues until user_num is less than 1.
Step-by-step explanation:
To write a while loop in this scenario, you would start by checking if user_num is greater than or equal to 1. If this condition is true, the loop will enter into its code block where user_num will be divided by 2 and then printed out to the user. The loop will continue this process, halving user_num each time, until user_num is less than 1. Here's an example of how you could write this loop:
while user_num >= 1:
user_num /= 2
print(user_num)
This loop will keep executing as long as user_num is greater than or equal to 1, and in each iteration, it will half user_num which effectively is performing a division by 2, and then output the result. Remember, if user_num is an integer, you might want to cast it to a float to get decimal results instead of truncating the results into an integer in languages like Python.