Combining real world and virtual world content through "Pirate Adventure" was moderately successful, with multiple gameplay sessions occurring. Further implementation feasibility testing, under more controlled conditions, needs to be conducted to assert the benefits of using a M-AVG for children's PA and FMS.
Blended learning is often viewed as a teaching mode that integrates a combination of online interactive activities with face-to-face learnings. This includes a mixture of different types of teaching and learning techniques, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools. In this study, we undertook an experiment to ascertain what constituted a practitionerbased approach to team-teaching for blended learning. The experiment occurred during one teaching period (11 weeks) at an Australian University where the classroom teaching experience was accessed by students and teachers across different geographical locations, using ICT. During the experiment, we completed individual and collaborative reflections, utilised an online survey to elicit students' perceptions about our team-teaching practice and critiqued the literature on blended learning. Qualitative analysis was conducted for each data source, revealing several key themes, which were: (1) skills, (2) student, team-teaching and teacher roles and (3) the role of ICT. This study explored these themes in detail, showing that when using ICT, specific communication processes build student and teachers' confidence as well as facilitating trust between those involved in providing a blended classroom experience. This in turn, contributes to the flexible use of ICT tools, offering opportunities for teacher and students to participate in variety of class roles, interacting via online, face-to-face or blended methods. Overall we found that to assist with setting-up and facilitating teachteaching for blended learning, it was important to provide role clarity, an agreed-to approach for classroom communications and purposeful integration of ICT for the teaching team and students when failure occurred. KEYWORDS Team-teaching; blended learning; mixed methods; information and communication technology; scholarship of teaching and learning What constitutes a practitioner-based approach to team-teaching for blended learning? Context of the study Students participated in eleven multi-locational classroom learning experiences (via different oncampus locations as well as online learning situations for face-to-face lectures that allowed 'live'
BackgroundThe neighbourhood environment such as the availability of parks are a key, but under-researched, influence on adolescents’ physical activity. In addition to overall physical activity levels, park-based physical activity and park visitation is low in this age group. Thus, it is critical to identify park features that may encourage or discourage adolescents from visiting parks. This study used a novel methodology to identify key physical characteristics of parks that are perceived to be important for park visitation and park-based physical activity among adolescents.MethodsFour secondary schools located in low, mid and high socio-economic status areas of Victoria, Australia were recruited. Using a purpose-built computer application, students in years 8–10 were presented with 44 original photographic images of park features. Participants rated each image (range 1–10) on how likely the feature would be to encourage them to visit a park and to engage in park-based physical activity, and placed symbols (‘thumbs up’/‘thumbs down’) on aspects of the image that had a positive or negative influence on their ratings.ResultsParticipants (n = 99) had a mean age of 13.3 years (SD = 0.87) and 53 % were female. Overall, the top three rated images prompting park visitation by adolescents were: a long steep slide, a flying fox and a table tennis table. These first two features were also reported as being likely to promote physical activity in the park. Differences in ratings were observed for boys and girls. The images that received the greatest number of “thumbs-up” symbols included large swings and slides, table tennis tables, no-smoking signs, flying foxes and BMX tracks. The images that received the greatest number of “thumbs-down” symbols included signage about rules, graffiti, toilets, concrete steps, and skate bowls.ConclusionPhysically challenging play equipment is likely to encourage adolescents to visit and be active in parks. Rules, graffiti, toilets and skate bowls may discourage visitation. It is important for park designers, planners and policy makers to consider adolescents’ views of what park design features are important so that parks are created that support and encourage visitation and optimise levels of physical activity when in the park.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12966-016-0391-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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