Assessing Impact of Active Learning on Student Outcomes: Texas Initiatives for Children's Activity and Nutrition (ICAN)

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Physical Activity
• Interventions: Behavioral: Texas I-CAN!

• Registration Number: NCT03087279
• Lead Sponsor: University of Texas at Austin

Brief Summary

Background: Active learning is designed to pair physical activity with the teaching of academic content. This has been shown to be a successful strategy to increase physical activity and improve academic performance. The existing designs have confounded academic lessons with physical activity. As a result, it is impossible to determine if the subsequent improvement in academic performance is due to: (1) physical activity, (2) the academic content of the active learning, or (3) the combination of academic material taught through physical activity.

Methods / Design: The Texas I-CAN project is a 3-arm, cluster randomized control trial in which 28 elementary schools were assigned to either control, math intervention, or spelling intervention. As a result, each intervention condition serves as an unrelated content control for the other arm of the trial, allowing the impact of physical activity to be separated from the content. That is, schools that perform only active math lessons provide a content control for the spelling schools on spelling outcomes. This also calculated direct observations of attention and behavior control following periods of active learning.

Discussion: This design is unique in its ability to separate the impact of physical activity, in general, from the combination of physical activity and specific academic content. This, in combination with the ability to examine both proximal and distal outcomes along with measures of time on task will do much to guide the design of future, school-based interventions.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2012-08-15
• Primary Completion: 2015-05-31
• Study Completion: 2015-05-31
• Study First Submitted: 2017-03-09
• Study First Submitted QC: 2017-03-15
• Study First Posted: 2017-03-22
• Status Verified: 2017-06
• Last Update Submitted: 2017-06-22
• Last Update Posted: 2017-06-26

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 2716

Inclusion Criteria

• students in 4th grade in a participating elementary school and their 4th grade teachers

Exclusion Criteria

• none

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Texas I-CAN Active Math Lessons	Texas I-CAN!	Texas I-CAN Active math lesson in academic classroom
Texas I-CAN Active Language Arts Lessons	Texas I-CAN!	Texas I-CAN Active language arts lessons in academic classroom

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Long-term math achievement	Change in math achievement scores from Baseline to 7 months	Academic scores on math sub tests (Calculation, Fluency) of the Woodcock Johnson III
Time on task	change in time on task from baseline to 15 minutes post academic lesson	student attentional focus in the classroom 15 minutes prior to and 15 minutes post active lesson implemented in the classroom on one school day
Long-term language arts achievement	Change in language arts achievement from Baseline to 7 months	Academic scores on spelling sub test of the Woodcock Johnson III and comprehension section of Gates MacGinitie test
Acute academic achievement	change in math and language arts scores from Baseline to 2 weeks	acute academic scores on math and language arts test developed by fourth grade teacher
Physical activity level	one school week	time in moderate to vigorous physical activity