Elon faculty are studying the effects of an innovative physical fitness program taking place in local elementary schools.
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By Natalie Allison ’13
An Elon University researcher is helping a local nonprofit improve the physical well-being of elementary school students while enhancing the traditional classroom learning experience, and their efforts have landed the project a grant from a national program supported by First Lady Michelle Obama.
Assistant Professor Paula DiBiasio in the Department of Physical Therapy Education has been working with Laura Fenn, a former Orange County fifth-grade teacher, in a program inspired by Fenn’s concern for her own students’ level of physical activity and limited opportunities to experience alternative methods of learning.
“The Walking Classroom,” as the project is named, is now being tested in multiple Alamance-Burlington elementary schools. The project and affiliated Elon University research received this month a $50,000 grant from the Active Schools Acceleration Project, an initiative of ChildObesity180, an organization dedicated to fighting the rise tide of childhood obesity in the United States in collaboration with researchers at Tufts University.
Fenn and DiBiasio will expand their programs and technologies to schools of different types, sizes, and geographies across the country.
The Walking Classroom uses MP3 players loaded with audio lessons in line with North Carolina Common Core instructional standards. Students each have their own audio player, called a WalkKit, and walk outside several times a week around a specified route or track while listening.
“I realized that kids were getting less physical activity throughout the day,” Fenn said. “Budgets are being cut and some students are getting less time in PE — the kids who needed recess the most were usually the ones who were held back during recess time for remediation to do better on tests throughout school year. It became a vicious cycle.”
Fenn’s efforts to promote The Walking Classroom, however, have not gone without the assistance of an Elon study seeking to provide evidence of the effects the program has on students.
“The research component is paramount to the program’s success,” Fenn said. “There are a lot of educational programs out there. Without having solid evidence that this is an instructional tool with proven results that kids can learn and get healthy, it just becomes another good idea. With the research, we’re on our way to becoming a proven educational tool.”
According to DiBiasio, the study she designed, titled “Move, Listen and Learn,” looks at three domains: physical health and wellbeing, academic growth and teacher and student satisfaction with the method of walking (or rolling in a wheel chair) and learning.
As the primary investigator of the study, DiBiasio said preliminary findings have shown academic growth in the students tested who walked while listening to the audio lessons. Eric Hall, an associate professor of exercise science; Elizabeth Bailey, a lecturer in health and human performance; and David Cooper, dean of the School of Education, have all been involved in this project with DiBiasio.
Several Elon DPT candidates and exercise science majors have assisted with data collection at the elementary schools.
“The kids and the teachers overwhelmingly love it and preliminary findings are positive,” DiBiasio said. “We have so much interest, we’re going national, which will allow us a much larger and more diverse study population.”
DiBiasio and Fenn have been invited to go to Washington, D.C., on June 13 to be recognized and receive the grant.