Aplicación móvil Endomondo para promocionar la actividad física en estudiantes de educación secundaria (Endomondo smartphone app to promote physical activity in high school students)

Abstract

Mobile applications are integrated into students’ lives and, therefore, their use for educational purposes can become a resource to improve the learning-teaching process. Simultaneously, the use of applications can help increase the level of motivation in the integration of physical activity into their day-to-day life and extracurricular time. The objective of the didactic experience was to analyze the effect of the use of the Endomondo application in Physical Education subject. In the didactic experience, with a quasiexperimental design without pretest, 138 students in the third and fourth years of Compulsory Secondary Education (64 girls and 74 boys; 15.4±0.5 years) agreed to participate voluntarily in this research. It was implemented in a secondary high school in the southern of Spain, with a medium socio-culture index and integrated into the curriculum of the subject of Physical Education. The students carried out collective challenges by group-class as well as individually. The results showed that a majority of the students participated (81.7%), with family involvement, in addition to the generic achievement of the collective (83.3%) and individual challenges (84.4%). The use of new technologies can be an educational resource that helps increase the amount of time adolescents dedicate to physical activity.

Consecuencias de la COVID-19 en el uso de aplicaciones móviles y del tiempo de compromiso motor en las clases bilingües y no bilingües de Educación Física en Secundaria

“…Cabe mencionar que la gran mayoría del profesorado, en este estudio, ha realizado propuestas de registro de actividad física en las sesiones en línea como sustitución a las clases presenciales. En muchos de los casos se han utilizado aplicaciones tipo Endomondo, Strava o Runtastic para el planteamiento de objetivos o retos, siguiendo planteamientos parecidos a los sugeridos por Gil-Espinosa et al (2020). A pesar de las numerosas virtudes de estos planteamientos (Moreno-Casado et al, 2015), aún son pocos los docentes que animan o motivan a realizar esta propuesta fuera del horario escolar, con el fin de involucrar a los estudiantes en la realización de AF diaria y prolongada en el tiempo.…”

“…Por estas razones, la introducción de las aplicaciones móviles para el seguimiento de la actividad física diaria en el horario extraescolar puede llegar a convertirse en una magnífica herramienta a partir de la cual se pueden obtener grandes beneficios, como compensar la pérdida de tiempo de compromiso motor (TCM) en las sesiones de EF, aumentar la motivación del alumnado, desarrollar las competencias digitales (Gallego et al, 2016;Monguillot et al, 2014;Sánchez-Alcaraz et al, 2020b), aumentar los niveles de actividad física fuera del horario escolar (Gil-Espinosa et al, 2020) e, incluso, disminuir el peso corporal (Aznar-Díaz et al, 2019).…”

Mandatory after-school use of step tracker apps improves physical activity, body composition and fitness of adolescents

“…However, research has also been conducted in the field of education with mobile applications that encourage physical activity outside school hours (Direito et al, 2015 ; Gil-espinosa et al, 2020 ; Seah & Koh, 2021 ). Although this research the use of mobile application outside of school was shown to be more effective than the use during school hours, the results were not completely clear.…”

“…Other research studies investigated the effectiveness of immersive (Zombies, Run) and non-immersive (Get Running) apps on adolescents after school hours, finding no significant changes in the physical activity and physical fitness variables analyzed after the intervention (Direito et al, 2015 ). The third study used the Endomondo app with high school students to increase their activity level after school hours, and showed that new technologies could be a useful resource to increase the physical activity time of adolescents (Gil-Espinosa et al, 2020 ). However, in all of these studies, the practice of physical activity outside school hours was promoted from the subject of Physical Education, but not as an obligation for the student, but rather as an option.…”

“…In this regard, mobile applications such as Strava, Pacer or MapMyWalk have been shown to be ideal for this purpose, as they utilize numerous behavioral change techniques (Bondaronek et al, 2018 ), but their effectiveness has only been demonstrated in the adult population (Leong & Wong, 2017 ; Peng et al, 2016 ; Petersen et al, 2020 ). Thus, in the adolescent population, attempts to integrate the use of mobile apps in the educational setting have shown no or small benefits on physical activity, fitness, AMD, and body composition in adolescents (Direito et al, 2015 ; Gil-Espinosa et al, 2020 ), probably due to the lack of adherence to this type of interventions or to the optional nature of their use (He et al, 2021 ; Seah & Koh, 2021 ).…”