Abstract

Education budget limitations in the province of Quebec have led to a narrowed focus on math and the hard sciences in public schools at the expense of physical education programmes, reducing the amount of exercise time set aside for youth. This reduction is reflected in the amount of time allocated to physical education in schools and the growing youth inactivity that will eventually lead to youth obesity and an expensive health care problem. This thesis examined ways in which available technology--specifically a blended learning approach involving multimedia and classic physical education class--can be employed to increase student time on task by reducing demonstration and instruction time by the teacher during class time. It examined criticisms and studies of blended learning and used these to determine a proper mix of technology and classic instruction that would best make use of available time. Badminton was the sport selected during this six-week study. One hundred students were separated into two control groups and two experiment groups and completed a junior level badminton course. The control groups were under a regular structured badminton class, while the experimental groups utilized a badminton website specially created to augment the regular classroom instruction. At the end of the study the students underwent a badminton performance and knowledge test in order to evaluate whether or not significant differences existed between groups. The results indicated that a blended online learning approach to badminton was more effective than the traditional method of teaching badminton. The experimental groups as a whole out performed the control groups in both written and practical tests, with a total mean score of 24.72, compared to 20.66.