Investigating the Impact of Virtual Reality and Gamification on Improving Physical Activities in School

Abstract

Background: The rise of obesity creates a critical health problem in childhood which can establish obesity in adulthood. It is significant in the first years of life to participate in physical activity program. In other words, children have to perform physical activity for preventing obesity and toward reducing obesity in adulthood. In this regard, it seems to be important in elementary schools. In this regard, interventions were used to perform physical activity. We have utilized virtual reality and gamification as an intervention to increase motivation for exerting physical activity in elementary school. In reality, three critical areas have been identified to enhance quality physical education program include Promoting intrinsic motivation, enhancing perceived physical competence, and creating a mastery-oriented physical-activity environment.Methods: Mixed quantitative and qualitative study to specify the effects of integration gamification and virtual reality in the physical activity program was used. Analyses were conducted using IBM Statistics SPSS 25.0 software. Also, we used independent-samples T-test to compare results.Results: Total of 25 elementary students participated in our study. This study performed about combination of gamification and virtual reality games. we divided all the students into diverse groups. Results indicated the use of virtual reality and gamification could enhance motivation in children to perform physical activity in school.Conclusion: Virtual reality technology and gamification on physical activity environments had a positive effect on the motivation of elementary students. virtual reality and gamification on motivation leads students to achieve higher levels of engagement in performing physical activity.

Exergaming Effects on Physical Activity Beliefs and Intention among At-Risk Hispanic Youth

“…Recent research involving exergaming have included virtual reality (VR) exergames, which have shown promise as motivating children to perform physical activity in school settings (Roshanpour & Nikroo, 2020). Physical educators might also consider VR exergaming into programming in an effort to stay ahead of current trends to increase student physical activity enjoyment.…”