Project-Based Learning Instruction on College Students' Attitudes and Physical Activity Levels

Friday, April 1, 2011: 9:30 AM
Room 26B (Convention Center)
Mei-Yao Huang1, Chien-Chih Chou2 and Tsung-Wen Yang1, (1)National Taiwan Sport University, TaoYuan, Taiwan, (2)Taipei Physical Education College, Taipei, Taiwan

Background/Purpose: There has been an increasing attention to integration of project-based learning into Asian school curricula. However, empirical work examining students' attitude toward health-related leaning fitness and physical activity levels in project-based learning instruction has been scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if the project-based learning instruction influenced university student's attitude towards health-related physical fitness and physical activity levels.

Method: Forty-five sophomore (n=54) students and their teacher were participated in this study. All students received the project-based learning instruction for thirteen weeks. Students were asked to complete the Attitude towards Health-related Fitness Assessment (AHFA) in the beginning of the intervention and in the end of the intervention. The AHFA contained 4 factors which were favorite (i.e., enjoy participating PA), practical (i.e., learning fitness increases sport performance), affect (i.e., know more about PA), and behavior intention (i.e., I feel good when I doing exercise). The researcher provided a weekly physical activity card (i.e., walk around school two time a day) for them to complete and Yamax Digi-walker 701 for students to record their daily physical activity levels after the class.

Analysis/Results: The results indicated that: a). there was a significantly overall learning attitude improved from pre-test (M=177.49) to post test (M=182.96) and b). a positive liner physical activity levels were found in both male (F=35.41, p<.05 ) and female students (F=28.26, p<.05) after received the intervention.

Conclusions: As results, it was concluded that health-related fitness learning attitude and physical activity levels both can be enhanced by applying the project-based learning instruction.