Impact of a university physical conditioning sport education season on students’ fitness levels

Abstract

Objectives:

Basic activity programmes are offered in numerous universities, with the primary objective of increasing involvement in different physical activities while instilling the value of lifetime fitness. Although these programmes have been shown to be beneficial, there is a lack of research focused on their effectiveness of improving physical activity levels. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine changes in college-aged students’ aerobic fitness levels following participation in a university physical conditioning course.

Methods:

Participants in this study were 47 university students from two physical conditioning courses, one taught using Sport Education and another taught with direct instruction. Student’s aerobic fitness levels were assessed through the Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run (PACER) and the one-mile run prior to and following the 5-month course.

Results:

Results indicated a significant difference between groups on the total number of laps completed during the PACER test.

Conclusion:

The findings of this study demonstrate that students who participated in the Sport Education physical conditioning course experienced significant improvements over time for both tests and a significant improvement over traditional instruction in the number of PACER laps run.

Keywords

Adult health physical activity physical education physical fitness teaching

Introduction

Recently, multiple agencies have called to support the US Department of Health and Human Services recommendation that young people engage in at least 60 minutes of daily physical activity (American Heart Association, 2012; SHAPE America, 2017). Although consistent physical activity has been shown to promote healthy lifestyles, prevent chronic illnesses and support mental and cognitive health (USDHHS, 20808), only 42% of children between the ages of 6 and 11 and 8% of young people between the ages of 12 and 19 engage in the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity (USDHHS, 20808). While much attention is focused on youth, evidence suggests that young adults are excessively inactive, with 95% exhibiting poor fitness behaviours (US Department of Agriculture [USDA], 2010).

Basic instructional programmes (BIP) are offered in numerous universities with the intention of providing knowledge and instilling the value of being physically fit (Hensley, 2000). While some of these courses are dedicated to team and individual sports, others focus on physical conditioning, running and weight training, all with the main priority of increasing exposure and fitness ability (Adams and Brynteson, 1995). With these goals in mind, BIPs appear as an appropriate outlet to help improve fitness levels in young adults while simultaneously instilling the knowledge to become healthier individuals.

Although the examinations of BIP have been somewhat limited, research posits that the Sport Education model has been a primary mode of instruction in certain universities (Wahl-Alexander and Curtner-Smith, 2017). Not only have university students expressed higher levels of enjoyment, but also student evaluations were significantly higher in courses where this model was applied (Mohr et al., 2012). Furthermore, students expressed elevated levels of engagement (Bennett and Hastie, 1997) and social cohesion (Jenkins and Alderman, 2011) while improving considerably in game performance and content knowledge (Layne and Piipari, 2015) during Sport Education seasons in the university setting. Previous literature has demonstrated BIPs improve student knowledge (Adams et al., 2006) and enhance attitudes towards fitness (Brynteson and Adams, 1993); however, little has been done to explore actual improvements in students’ physical fitness levels.

While implementation of the Sport Education model of instruction at the university level appears advantageous, researchers have suggested that this model may not be conducive to achieving high levels of student fitness (Wallhead and O’Sullivan, 2005). However, an initial investigation of elementary-aged children showed that students who had participated in a Sport Education obstacle course season ran significantly more laps in a Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run (PACER) test than those in a control group (Hastie et al., 2008). Although these results cannot be attributed solely to the model, the results of this study aid in countering these previous assertions. Furthermore, more recently, scholars have examined the impact of a 20-lesson fitness season on 150 fifth graders. The results of this study indicated that students spent over 50% of class time engaged in moderate to vigorous activity, but students’ fitness levels also improved (Ward et al., 2017). While these initial findings are promising, little evidence exists on BIPs ability to improve university students’ physical fitness levels. With the Sport Education model being more widely employed within BIPs and with initial research positing the potential fitness benefits of implementing instruction in this capacity, further research aimed at determining the effectiveness of using this model of instruction at the university level appears prudent. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine changes in college-aged students’ aerobic fitness levels following their participation in physical conditioning BIP courses that utilised Sport Education.

Methods

Participants and setting

This study took place at a university in the Midwest of the USA. The total student enrolment at the time of this study was almost 20,000, with 57% Caucasian, 16% African American, 15% Hispanic, 5% Asian and 7% reporting other. The university offered a diverse variety of courses within its BIP, including physical conditioning, yoga, archery, running, tennis, basketball, volleyball, pickle ball and swimming. Although such courses are not a degree requirement, on average nearly 17% of the student population enrols each semester.

The participants in this study were 47 university students enrolled in two physical conditioning courses without any knowledge of any experimental differences, and therefore, their assignment to the conditions was quasi-random. The first section of the course employed the Sport Education curriculum model and had 23 students (12 men, 11 women; M_age = 22.00 years), 10 Caucasian, 8 African American, 2 Asian, 2 Hispanic and 1 reporting other. None of these students had any previous experience with the Sport Education model. The second section had 24 students (11 men, 13 women; M_age = 21.25 years), 11 Caucasian, 7 Hispanic, 4 African American and 2 Asian. The instructor used the direct instruction approach to teach this section of the course.

The instructor of both physical conditioning courses in this study was a graduate teaching assistant, who was a trained physical educator with 3 years of secondary teaching experience. The instructor had previous experience as both a personal trainer and a fitness instructor, in addition to previous experience teaching Sport Education in the elementary, secondary, and university contexts. The institutional review board of Northern Illinois University approved the research protocol, and participants’ consent was obtained from all students enrolled in both classes.

Physical conditioning intervention

Sport education

The physical conditioning Sport Education course consisted of a 26-lesson season, with classes meeting bi-weekly for 75 minutes over a 5-month period. The content focused on five components (i.e. muscle strength, muscle endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility and body composition) of health-related fitness (Caspersen et al., 1985), and in line with recommendations (Siedentop et al., 2011), the event model competition format was utilised.

The season was broken into seven 3-day rotations, each focused on one specific content area (i.e. aerobics, tabata circuits, drum fit, high-intensity circuits, sport fitness, yoga, jump rope cardio). On day 1 of each rotation, the teacher used direct instruction to teach the skills that would be used in the concurrent days. During these lessons, teams competed together to accumulate points based on goal completion and enthusiasm. On the second day, one of the teams was tasked with designing their own activity, leading instruction and providing motivation throughout class. The instructor, based on several criteria, allocated points to the duty team, and the remaining teams gained points dependent on completion and attitude. The third day was a special competition challenge. The instructor created a unique challenge for all teams to engage in, and teams were awarded points depending on their finish and positivity (Blocker and Wahl-Alexander, 2018). Throughout the semester, the instructor encouraged outside engagement, as students accumulate points by reaching step-count benchmarks each week. In line with the precepts of Sport Education, competition was established through a formalised league standings board, where teams accumulated points for completing formal competitions, facilitation of activities, fair play, motivation and weekly step-count benchmarks. Each competition and facilitation of activities provided an opportunity to acquire up to five points, whereas teams could accrue two points per lesson for motivating and maintaining pre-existing positive sporting behaviour. Finally, teams were awarded up to five points weekly for exceeding prescribed step-count benchmarks.

Sport Education model fidelity

In order to authenticate the season, guidelines from previous literature (Sinelnikov, 2009) were used to ensure model fidelity. For this study, one independent sport pedagogy faculty member coded these teaching behaviours from video recordings and document analysis. The results from Table 1 illustrate that all appropriate benchmarks were employed during the fitness season.

Table 1.

Demonstration of Sport Education – specific pedagogical behaviours during the season.

Benchmark element		Fitness season
		Planned	Actual
Teacher plans the unit around principles of a ‘season’	Management organisational phase	✓	✓
	Team selection phase	✓	✓
	Preseason scrimmage phase	✓	✓
	Regular season phase	✓	✓
	End of season event	✓	✓
The teacher promotes the ‘affiliation’ concept	Students involved in team selection process	X	X
The teacher promotes the ‘affiliation’ concept	Consistent teams for duration of unit	✓	✓
Teacher promotes students taking ‘responsibility’	Incorporated student roles	✓	✓
	Teacher holds student accountable	✓	✓
	Teacher provides referee training	✓	✓
	Teacher provides task sheets	✓	✓
	Teacher adopts facilitator approach during interactions	✓	✓
	Teacher encourages conflict resolution	✓	✓
Teacher uses ‘formal competition’ within unit plan	A formal schedule of competition is established	✓	✓
Teacher uses ‘formal competition’ within unit plan	Fair play and sportsmanship utilised	✓	✓
Teacher utilised a form of ‘record keeping’ within unit	Teacher provides rubric for scorekeeper	✓	✓
Teacher utilised a form of ‘record keeping’ within unit	Incorporates peer assessments as part of record-keeping process	✓	✓
Teacher uses ‘culminating event’ near the end of the season	Culminating event is festive in nature	✓	✓
Teacher creates ‘festivity’ within unit	Teams are easily identifiable (team names, team colours, team posters)	✓	✓
Teacher creates ‘festivity’ within unit	Teacher emphasises the celebration of fair play	✓	✓

Direct instruction

The students in this physical conditioning course taught using direct instruction participated in twenty-six 75-minute lessons, bi-weekly during the same 5-month period as the Sport Education condition, with the same fitness concentration. The instructor taught matching content and lessons through seven 3-day rotations. Days 1 and 2 in each content area were instructor-led whole class activities, with students competing in special challenges on the third day of every content area. Similarly, teams were tasked with tracking their step counts outside of class and creating a physical activity log throughout the semester. The significant differences between the Sport Education and direct instruction condition are that in the latter (a) teams changed every week, (b) there were no team-created and facilitated activities, (c) no formal record keeping or festivity was included and (d) no outside engagement bonus was awarded.

Data collection

In this study, aerobic fitness levels were assessed by administering the PACER and the one-mile run. Students participating in both the Sport Education and direct instruction class completed the PACER and one-mile run during the first (pre-intervention) and last week of the semester (post-intervention). Both the PACER and one-mile run have proven to be reliable and valid in young adults and were used in this study to evaluate cardiovascular endurance (Morrow et al., 2010). During all assessments, the instructor informed the class that ‘the purpose of each test was to assess current fitness levels, and to complete the test to the best of their ability’. All students were aware that their score would not influence their course grade.

The course instructor administered the PACER 20-m multi-stage shuttle test as outlined by the procedures in the FITNESSGRAM manual (Welk and Meredith, 2010). For example, each student was tasked with running from one marker to another (20 m apart) while touching their foot on the opposite marked end before the beep sounded over the loud speaker. In order to keep up with the pre-recorded beeping cadence, students ran back and forth between the marked distance as many times as possible before (a) voluntarily stopping, (b) failing to reach the marker in the apportioned time on two occasions or (c) no longer sustaining the required speed. The instructor recorded the total number of laps each student completed.

The one-mile run was conducted in both conditions – the class period following the PACER test during the first and last week of the semester. Students completed the one-mile run on a well-maintained regulation outdoor 400-m track. The instructor recorded the total time taken to complete the one-mile run for all students.

Participants were categorised by their results on the PACER and one-mile run into healthy fitness zones (Welk and Meredith, 2010) and were considered ‘in’ the healthy fitness zone by the following classifications (Table 2). Young men had to complete 72–106 laps, while young women had to complete 41–72 laps to be considered ‘in’ the fitness zone. On the mile test, men had to record a time between 8:30 and 7:00 (minutes:seconds) and women between 10:00 and 8:00. In this study, students who scored below this criteria were considered ‘out’ of the healthy fitness zone, and participants who received scores above this criteria were considered ‘in’ the zone due to the physiological determination that they had an outstanding aerobic fitness level.

Table 2.

FITNESSGRAM: Standards for the HFZ groupings.

Group	PACER HFZ (n)	Mile HFZ (n)
Direct Instruction – Pretest	9	3
Direct Instruction – Posttest	14	6
Sport Education – Pretest	10	5
Sport Education – Posttest	21	10

PACER: Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run; HFZ: Healthy Fitness Zone

Values equal the number of students within the healthy fitness zone as defined by FITNESSGRAM.

Data analysis

Descriptive statistics were calculated to report performance on the PACER test by the number of laps completed and the time to complete a one-mile run for both intervention groups. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine differences between groups for the PACER test, mile run test and healthy fitness zone classification at baseline. Two-way mixed ANOVA was used to examine group differences for the PACER test and the mile run test. Paired-samples t-test analysis was used to assess mean difference in healthy fitness zone classification for the interventions groups. An alpha level was set at .05, with the p scores reported in the results.

Results

PACER test

There were no outliers as assessed by the box plot, and the data were normally distributed, as assessed by the Shapiro–Wilk test of normality (p > .05). There was homogeneity of variances (p > .05) and covariances (p > .05), as assessed by Levene’s test of homogeneity and Box’s M test. There was a statistically significant interaction between intervention and time for the PACER test, F(1, 45) = 37.630, p < .0005, partial η² = .455. The main effect for time showed that there was statistically significant difference in the number of laps completed at the various times points, F(1, 45) = 122.471, p < .0005, partial η² = .731. The main effect of group showed that there was a statistically significant difference in mean PACER laps between intervention groups, F(1, 45) = 4.175, p = .047, partial η² = .085. Data are mean ± standard error, unless otherwise stated (Table 3)

Table 3.

Student’s performance on the progressive aerobic fitness tests.

Group	PACER test	Mile test
Direct Instruction – Pretest	53.13 ± 20.54	11.41 ± 2.32
Direct Instruction – Posttest	62.63 ± 22.92*	10.86 ± 2.21
Sport Education – Pretest	53.83 ± 19.58	11.45 ± 2.66
Sport Education – Posttest	86.96 ± 24.64*	10.03 ± 2.35

PACER: Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run.

Values are mean ± SD.

Significant difference between groups.

One-mile test

There were no outliers, as assessed by the box plot, and the data were normally distributed, as assessed by the Shapiro–Wilk test of normality (p > .05). There was homogeneity of variances (p > .05) and covariances (p > .05), as assessed by Levene’s test of homogeneity and Box’s M test. There was a statistically significant interaction between intervention and time for the mile test, F(1, 45) = 14.128, p < .0005, partial η2 = .239. The main effect for time showed that there was statistically significant difference in time for the mile at the different times points, F(1, 45) = 72.605, p < .0005, partial η2 = .617. Main effect of group showed no statistically significant difference in means on the mile test between intervention groups, F(1, 45) = .333, p = .567, partial η² = .033. A trend was observed for a greater decrease in post-intervention times for the Sport Education curriculum group (Table 3). Data are mean ± standard error, unless otherwise stated (Table 3).

Discussion

This study aimed to ascertain whether university students participating in a physical conditioning course using Sport Education would experience enhancements in aerobic fitness levels. These findings establish that students who participated in both physical conditioning courses saw a significant decrease in their one-mile run times and an increase in their PACER scores throughout the semester. Furthermore, the Sport Education condition experienced a significantly greater increase in their PACER scores when compared to the course taught using traditional instruction approach. This provides further support (Hastie et al., 2009; Ward et al., 2017) in the capability for students to improve their fitness ability during a Sport Education season.

Students participating in the Sport Education condition experienced significantly greater improvements in the number of PACER laps when compared to the direct instruction group. In addition, students in this same condition significantly decreased their one-mile run time during their enrolment in this course. Although these findings cannot exclusively be attributed to the method of instruction, the results parallel previous research indicating significant differences when comparing student’ participation in Sport Education compared to direct instruction of fitness content (Hastie et al., 2009). One potential explanation for this can be the highly autonomous climate created in Sport Education by structural features that are inherent to this model of instruction. These key features, which include team affiliation, festivity and competition between others, produce higher levels of enjoyment for amotivated students (Wallhead et al., 2013) when compared to direct instruction. These results lend support to the assumptions that Sport Education moves many students with varying motivation levels along the self-determined continuum (Hastie and Wallhead, 2016).

One of the key tenets of the Sport Education model is authenticity, which creates excitement and student buy-in through seasons replicating college or professional sports. Unlike most physical educators, the instructor of both classes encouraged all students to participate in physical activity outside of class time. However, in the Sport Education condition, teams were awarded points counting towards the league standings contingent upon accomplishing specific goals. Previous research indicates that in a school-based Sport Education season, group contingencies in conjunction with prompting students drastically improve activity levels in youth outside of school (Hastie et al., 2012). While it is impossible to affirm the impact this had on the results, future research examining the impact outside activity has on students fitness levels within the physical education setting is warranted.

Students in both physical conditioning courses experienced statistically significant improvements in their one-mile run over time (Table 3). Although the decrease in one-mile run times is not statistically significant between groups, a few conclusions can be reached. First, both groups experienced decreases in their one-mile run time over the course of the semester, with the direct instruction and Sport Education group reducing their scores by 32 and 85 seconds, respectively. Research suggests that prolonged exposure to any type of cardiovascular exercise will lead to improvements (Pate et al., 1995), so it is not much of a surprise that their mile times decreased over this 5-month period. However, it is noteworthy that although all students in both conditions started with similar mile times, students in the Sport Education condition reduced their time by almost 60 seconds more than those who received a course of direct instruction. Furthermore, more students scored within the healthy fitness zone for the one-mile run in Sport Education course when compared to traditional instruction. These findings coupled with the difference in PACER test illuminate the potential of the Sport Education model in university fitness courses. With the purpose of the study focused on fitness levels, this study cannot offer a precise rationale for these results. Nevertheless, the authors hypothesise that the authenticity of the season, coupled with the desire to exercise outside of school in order to accrue points towards the league standings, may account for these differences.

Limitations

There are several limitations that need to be recognised. First, the study occurred in only two physical conditioning courses at one university, which limits the generalizability of these results. Exploration of students’ fitness levels involving multiple courses in several universities could lead to greater population validity. Furthermore, by using intact university activity classes, it is difficult to determine whether there are other differences between the groups influencing the results that were not accounted for in this study. Although study findings illuminate the potential opportunity for Sport Education to be employed as a means for delivering fitness instruction in a university context, having instructors with the knowledge and experience teaching Sport Education is fundamental to success.

Second, this study evaluated student fitness levels by using both the PACER and one-mile run times before and after the course. The use of field tests in this study provided estimates of aerobic fitness levels and could have been influenced by participants’ motivation and effort levels. Future researchers should reproduce this study and aim to determine fitness levels by employing VO₂ max testing which would provide more consistent results.

Conclusion

This study is the first to examine fitness levels of university students prior to and following their enrolment in BIPs. Findings suggest that students who participated in both physical conditioning courses significantly improved both in their mile time and PACER score. In addition, the students in the Sport Education conditioning course showed a statistically significant improvement in their PACER scores and healthy fitness zone when compared with the traditional course. As these results demonstrate the potential benefits of using Sport Education in such contexts, replicating the study to other contexts and with larger sample size is warranted.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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