How to integrate sports video games in physical education classes?

The exponential growth in popularity of exergaming in physical education creates a new path for exploring how active video games may be integrated into school systems. Here are some suggestions to foster successful implementation of sports video games in physical education classes. These practices include real-life experiences of educators and students, as well as academic research and studies on the phenomenon.

1. Create Play-Like Environments: Teachers and educators should design active gaming curriculums that mimic playful environments, fostering intrinsic motivation among students. Active gaming promotes learning and cognitive benefits, with students demonstrating independent learning through exploration and peer interaction.

2. Cultivate the Element of Fun: Active gaming is found to be enjoyable for students, motivating them to participate in physical activity. Teachers should prioritize creating fun and engaging environments to encourage self-motivated participation.

3. Foster Individual and Peer Learning: Students prefer learning independently or from peers rather than from teachers. Teachers should facilitate peer mentorship and create environments that support independent learning.

4. Explore the Teacher’s Role: Should teachers act as facilitators? Should they provide guidance? Each education system may find the most appropriate methods. But how? Apart from experimenting with different forms of teaching and guidance, ad hoc training for educators, instruction strategies, and assessment processes should be incorporated within teacher preparation programs.

5. Investigate Student Experiences: Further research is recommended to understand students’ experiences with active gaming in physical education classes. The growing popularity of video games among youth suggests that active gaming may become a standard component of physical education programs in the future.

Overall, active gaming is seen as a valuable tool for increasing physical activity levels among children, deserving further exploration and integration into physical education curriculums. Researchers, educators, and professionals of various fields are on the front line in the design of this new approach to physical education.

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HopaSus Erasmus Sport Plus project was born out of the need of teachers and youth workers from 4 European countries to develop their digital skills and become more resilient in times of pandemics by using sport video games in their virtual or face-to-face classrooms. The aim of the project is to encourage sport teachers to recognize the potential of video games and sport applications and experiment with new strategies for incorporating them into their gyms and classrooms, and to promote the inclusion of “video games addicted youth” by changing the paradigm of persistent stereotyping of video games as predominantly mindless, violent forms of entertainment, into seeing the potential of video gaming technologies as instructional tools that takes out the children from the desk chair out into the sport field.