The effect of virtual education types on learning of perceptual-motor skills in elementary third grade students

As technology advances, the method by which learners acquire new skills has also progressed. With the help of the Internet, a wide range of options are available to those interested in enhancing their knowledge and skills. Learners and educators can now take advantage of the benefits of both online and offline teaching. In offline learning, participants have to acquire the content in ways such as watching recorded videos. On the other hand, online education takes place in the virtual platform through connecting to the Internet. In this regard, the current research was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of various types of virtual education, including online, offline, and combined (blended) education, on learning a perceptual-motor skill of jumping rope.

The present study was a semi-experimental one with a practical purpose. In this study, from elementary third-grade female students of Hamedan 2nd district of education, voluntarily 30 students (with a mean height of 129.1 ± 9.87 cm and a mean weight of 29.33 ± 21.88 kg) were selected and randomly assigned to three groups of 10 participants, including online, offline, and combined education. In order to collect information, personal characteristics questionnaire, jogging rope test (with content validity and test - retest reliability of 0.89), standard sports rope and smartphone were used. This research included the stages of introductory, acquisition, and retention. After completing the personal information questionnaire and consent form, the participants first received introductory instruction on the criterion task and obtained the necessary information. Then, they entered the acquisition phase. At this stage, each group was trained separately and based on the national jump roping plan for 4 sessions in online, offline and combined rope-jumping skill training. After completing the acquisition phase, all participants first took part in the acquisition test, and one week later, they also participated in the retention test to measure the phenomenon of motor learning, and their scores were recorded. To analyze the data, the Shapiro-Wilk test, Levene's test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used.

The findings showed that there was a significant difference between the scores obtained by the online and offline and combined and offline groups in both the acquisition and retention tests (p<0.05), in favor of the online and combined groups; this indicated that online and combined education groups performed better than the offline education group both in the acquisition phase and in the retention test. In addition, no significant statistical difference was found between the performance of the online and combined groups in any of the research stages (p>0.05).

The results of this research emphasize the importance of using online and combined methods in virtual education conditions to teach perceptual-motor skills to learners. Based on the results, it is suggested to teachers and trainers of motor skills to use online and combined training instead of online training, to teach motor skills in physical education virtual classes of elementary school to create an interactive and dynamic learning environment and motivation to participate in using physical education class.