For many students, physical education classes offer more than just a chance to play dodgeball. They serve as an introduction to key concepts, like fitness and exercise. But, in a post-pandemic world, it’s no longer unusual for P.E. classes to take place in a virtual space.
While schools aren’t requiring online learning for students anymore, online learning isn’t going to go away. During the 2023-2024 school year, more than 12,000 Tennessee students were enrolled in the Volunteer State’s 58 virtual schools, according to the 2023-24 Virtual Education Annual Report.
With more and more students learning – and taking gym class – remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers are having to adapt their curriculums. That’s what led Alex Adams, an assistant professor in Austin Peay State University’s Department of Health and Human Performance, to publish what he says is one of the first reviews of appropriate practices for online K-12 physical education earlier this month.
Most of the guidance – including from the Society of Health and Physical Educators, or SHAPE America – for virtual P.E. instruction actually pre-dated the pandemic, Adams said. So he worked to create a modernized guide to developing and teaching the class online.
“Essentially, what we did is we just looked at all the research since then and updated it,” Adams said. “We added to their list and said, ‘Okay, we've learned something since then. Consider these things.’”
The publication is split into four categories: curriculum, learning environment, student pre-requisites and assessment.
Adams said every virtual classroom can apply the guide differently.
“Within each of those recommendations, there's different ideas of how to adapt or adopt that for their setting, whether it's kindergarten or eighth grade or asynchronous versus synchronous or hybrid,” he said.
Access to class resources can vary wildly from district to district. Materials one teacher might have in their classroom aren’t necessarily available in every school, and gyms – virtual and otherwise – are no different. In-person physical education usually means everyone gets the same equipment and access to the space, but virtual gyms don’t guarantee that.
“The big thing is rethink the virtual gym, think about things that you couldn't normally do, and take advantage of that, lean into that and think out of the box,” Adams said.
When it comes to online learning, COVID-19 may be the first thing that comes to mind. But, Adams said there’s a big difference between online courses completed during the COVID-19 pandemic – during what’s called emergency remote learning – and online courses today.
“People who are in our virtual schools, they choose to typically be there, right? COVID-19 students didn't choose to be there,” Adams said. “So we try to only look at strategies that actually would work or that could still work in our current virtual settings.”
One of Adams’ major aims is to make P.E. an enjoyable experience for students who take the class virtually, regardless of age. He said the class, which is very visual because of its emphasis on movement, can often be intimidating for some students and cause them to prefer taking the class online.
“Historically, one of the biggest populations that took online P.E. are people who didn't like P.E.,” Adams said.
Adams said the goal of the report is to encourage further research and provide guidance to those creating and learning through online P.E. curriculums.
“If this helps a teacher or helps a parent or helps an administrator, then this is great,” Adams said. “My whole goal is to help people in the field with this.”
