Exergames on situational interest and physical activity in high school students: a pilot program in Physical Education

Résumé En

Introduction: Less than half of French people over 15 meet the recommendations of the World Health Organization in terms of physical activity (PA). Exergames (digital games involving whole body movements) could be introduced in Physical Education (PE) to arouse students' interest and increase their PA (Trout & Christie, 2007). Situational Interest (SI) is an individual's form of intrinsic and ephemeral motivation for an activity or content (Chen & Darst, 2001). However, the issue of maintaining IS, beyond a discovery phase of a novel activity, has been little addressed until now (Roure et Pasco, 2017). The objective of this pilot study was to design a PE program based on exergames in order to maintain SI and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) in high school students throughout the five weeks of program implementation. Method: 45 students from two high schools in Brest (France) took part in this program during their PE lessons. This five-week pilot program was developed by a research team, based on three different exergames. This program's design was based on the different dimensions of SI that were supposed to sustain motivation and PA over time. Repeated measures were performed during PE lessons. Accelerometers were used to record PA intensity during each session. SI 19 items questionnaire (Roure et al., 2016) was used to collect SI on lesson 1 and 3. Results: The program had negative effects on students' SI and positive effects on their PA displayed during the lessons. MVPA increase between first lesson (M=39.326; SD=9.259) and second lesson (M=44.683; SD=11.479; t(23)=-3.678, p