Background/Purpose Badminton, a skillful racquet sport has become a popular recreational sport in Taiwan. Learning the badminton techniques based on visualization and mimicry of the movement from elite players. Although class instruction methods have improved recently, the vision of demonstrations from instructors disappeared soon. The purpose of this study aimed to develop and evaluate a badminton learning website.
Method: We developed a website featured with badminton rules, descriptions of various techniques, demonstration video clips, and discussion forum prior to the study. Twelve badminton elective courses in Northern Taiwan Institute of Science and Technology including 528 students were randomly assigned into experimental (N=286) and control (N=242) groups. All students took badminton technique test including serve, clears, drop shots, smash, drive, and net play before and after 12-week class instruction and practice. Besides, students in experimental group required to visit the website and watch demonstration video clips at least twice per week. Pre-test showed no significant differences between two groups.
Analysis/Results: Data were analyzed by SPSS 17.0 using independent sample t test, paired t test, and Pearson's correlation. Both experimental and control group improved significantly in serve, drop shots, drive, and net play. Experimental group score significantly higher in serve (t =4.22, p <.001), drop shots (t =1.81, p =.032), and net play (t =3.66, p <.001). Male students score higher in smash (t =8.62, p <.001) and drive (t =5.71, p <.001) than female students. Scores of serve, drop shot, and net play were highly correlated while smash score highly correlated to drive score.
Conclusions: The badminton learning aid via internet improved the skill-oriented badminton techniques such as serve, drop shots, and net play but did not improve power-oriented techniques such as smash and drive.