European Journal of Sport Science

The publication comes from work I did during my Masters by Research degree a few years ago under the supervision of Alan Roberts (co-author). This is a section of the total work we did. This paper essentially looked at comparisons between field and laboratory tests in orienteers. Field testing is more relevant, but more variable, laboratory testing is less relevant but easy to control, so we get better reliability in the test results. We used a uphill treadmill protocol to show we could match the gross physiological demands of treadmill running to speeds matched in orienteers running over actual terrain. There are still difficulties in comparing laboratory results but this study goes some way towards showing what kind of laboratory protocols are likely to be better at showing improvements in orienteers terrain running ability.

Interestingly, all the testing we did was in forest which has since disappeared with various fires and developments in Canberra.

The mobile Sport Science centre used in my Masters

The Abstract follows:

Orienteers have been physiologically assessed in the past using treadmill protocols designed for road and track runners, neglecting the specific conditions in which they compete. The purpose of the present study was to quantify the agreement between physiological data obtained from a specific field-based protocol with that obtained with a matched laboratory-based assessment. Ten elite orienteers completed a six-stage incremental test in both field and laboratory settings. The field test comprised a marked 803-m course over flat forest terrain, with the participants paced by a bicycle parallel to the course. The laboratory test was conducted on a treadmill at a 4.5% grade. Oxygen consumption (VO2) and heart rate were measured continuously and blood lactate concentration at the completion of each stage. Regression statistics and an analysis of variance were used to analyse the data. Heart rate, blood lactate concentration, and VO2 increased significantly with increases in running speed, but there were no significant differences in heart rate, blood lactate concentration or VO2 between the field and laboratory tests at any running speed. Regression statistics revealed that only trivial or small differences existed for measures associated with submaximal testing, including speed at the onset of blood lactate accumulation. There was less agreement for maximal data with differences typically small to moderate. In general, there were only minimal differences between the field and laboratory tests, supporting their use in this population. This initial study provides the first steps in the creation of improved test protocols for terrain running based performance.

I’ve been working on an open access research training site on wikiversity for a few months now – Sport research on Wikiversity. It stems from being the convenor of the Bachelor of Sport Studies (Honours) at the University of Canberra. It came to my attention pretty quickly that there aren’t any good sources of information about conducting research, at least not open access online resources that have all the bits and pieces stepped out. There are lots of good resources out there though (in particular, Will Hopkin’s  A New View of Statistics is, frankly, pretty amazing) so this is my attempt in a way to accumulate as many good ones as I could, and to break the research training process into some obvious chunks, obvious to me at least.

There is still some work to go, in particular I want to add short worked activities into each module but haven’t as yet. I designed it all on wikiversity so anyone can contribute to the resource, I’m not the all knowing research training guru that’s for sure. The last few modules in particular need a bit of work and I haven’t done qualitative research enough justice because it’s not really my area. On the whole though, I’m at the stage where I’m quite happy with it. hopefully it will improve further with time and others contributing.

The research training is constructed to fit with the honours program but could benefit anyone intrested. I have constructed the following modules so far.

• What is research?
• Research design
• Finding research
• Critiquing the literature
• Validity and reliability of data
• Ethics
• Data analysis and visualisation
• Writing
• Getting published
• Grant applications
• Presenting your work

If you would like to contribute and add to the resource please do so. You can learn more about contributing to Wikiversity on the Welcome to Newcomers page.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 28 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 37 posts. There were 42 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 11mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 28th with 160 views. The most popular post that day was Recovery and Orienteering.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were attackpoint.org, mail.live.com, twitter.com, learnonline.canberra.edu.au, and canberra.edu.au.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ben rattray, orienteering interesting facts, exercise based jobs, job vacancies for exercise scientists australia, and afl gps.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Recovery and Orienteering January 2010
1 comment

Finding a job in exercise and sports science December 2009
3 comments

Orienteering and the environment January 2010
5 comments

Video reporting an orienteering event May 2010

About Me November 2009
2 comments

The assignment is essentially for students to create open online resources about exercise and a metabolic condition (on a wiki) for themselves, and anyone else that wants to use it. The resource will eventually become open, so anyone can edit it and hopefully it will evovle, improve and stay up to date over the years. Details of the assignment, and the resources that will be developed can be found at http://metabolicconditions.wikispaces.com/. I’m not sure I like wikispaces, so it may move, but for the moment, that’s where it is. I have until February 2011 before students will actually start to engage in it, so there is time for some evolution of the assignment itself.

Feel free to comment.

http://www.youtube.com/v/kxplG-BoenI?fs=1&hl=en_GB&rel=0

The first video is a bit long but provides most of what I talked about in terms of the obesity epidemic in how it might be tackled, as well as the fitness vs fatness debate. The second video below outlines the course options within the Faculty of Health at the University of Canberra. Thanks to Leigh Blackall for the video work.

http://www.youtube.com/v/razt7EKwDAA?fs=1&hl=en_GB&rel=0

http://www.youtube.com/v/rnjg7jfzH0A?fs=1&hl=en_GB&rel=0

The US obesity data comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Catalyst video can be found here. Featured image is Central Obesity 011

Check out the video below to see some of our laboratory facilities in action.

From the Monitor:

The Greater Western Sydney AFL team and the University of Canberra will work together to develop and train athletes, conduct sports research and offer internships to sports studies students under a new deal.

The two organisations have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on research to promote athlete development and sport. The agreement will also see the University and GWS explore opportunities for a shared elite athlete facility on campus.

http://www.youtube.com/v/D1o3Hu5UKBw?fs=1&hl=en_GB&rel=0

Another co-learner and educator Jess Parker offered the following for the engagement theory which I thought was quite nice:

‘Engagement Theory’ which provides a framework for technology based teaching and learning. This theory requires three key elements to ensure learner engagement;

1. Emphasis on a collaborative effort
2. Project based assignments
3. Non Academic Focus

If these three elements are combined in a learning task, it will result in creative, authentic & meaningful learning experiences. Students will be intrinsically motivated to learn which is required for ACTIVE self directed learning.

The post about individual tools offers more information about how individual tools meet this learning ideals. I think another important consideration is the (inevitable) comparisons between face to face and online education. Learning principles are of course not isolated to either or, but I admit I had not really fully considered online teaching in this sense. Jess Parker summarizes many of the advantages of educational technologies but in some respects I disagree. The true advantage of the online era is flexibility. Students no longer need to be on-site, this restriction has truly disappeared. Further still, whether we like it or not and for numerous reasons, online education is here and we need to make the most of it. The advantages of online do not exceed those of face to face, but the thoughtful use of educational technologies means that many of the principles of learning do not have to be compromised by it either. Principles of the ICT learning design framework and engagement theory promote good learning activities and in some cases (such as the openess and re-use of resources) offer greater opportunities for the learning to be recycled.

In my reflections I have included a bit of a key to give you a quick idea of my thoughts. Number of *’s = my idea on teaching usefulness, and ‡ means I already use this in a teaching setting. Of course, this is just a few of the many tools available online.

**** ‡ Blogs

I guess blogs can be used in two ways, to help deliver content and share ideas, reflection etc from the teacher or network, but perhaps more effectively to synthesize concepts and ideas and to donate this back to the world. This last point in particular increases the learner’s engagement in accordance with Kearsley and Shneiderman (1998)’s Engagement Theory. I would like to use learner blogs in particular for reflection. I don’t see blogs as being the main place where students primarily create a resource to share, but rather reflect on the resource and/or it’s creation. This sharing in itself allows for a student’s own self reflection as well as a sharing of the process or learning that took place. Valuable in itself.

***** ‡ Aggregators

I love aggregators. I use google reader, and whilst I don’t have a particular affinity to it, it seems to do the job well. I like aggregators because they save time and allow me to stop on top of new research and ideas that I’m interested in. I have written about this previously in a wiki about “using the internet for learning and research“. I don’t think they play a particular role in enhancing learning, it’s pretty easy to disengage from them, but they can assist teaching as a way of ensuring content is up to date and contextualised.

**** ‡ Wikis

I must admit I have a particular affinity to wikis at present. I have used them in and outside of work and have a number of units that I am developing on Wikiversity (Exercise and metabolic disease and Sport research). I believe this work will really integrate the Engagement Theory and I will write more on that in the near future.

The RecentChanges Wiki conference I attended increased my understanding tremendously and I learnt quite a bit by talking with others.

*** ‡ Webquests

Webquests (such as webquests.org) clearly fit the ICT learning design framework for enhancing learning, i.e. webquests encourage the creation of clear learning tasks, resources and supports. When I first became aware of the concept it made tremendous sense to me, and whilst I like the idea of the concept traditional webquests seem a bit clunky and old. I aim to use webquest based concepts of learning tasks, resources and supports on other platforms such as wikis and blogs.

** ‡ Lecture style presentations utilising product tools like powerpoint and  keynote and sharing them via slidecast and slideshare are another way to assist in the delivery of unit content. Although this may assist in catering for increased flexibility and learning styles (which are important) they do not necessarily support engagement theory concepts, similar to traditional lectures. So some thought needs to go in to it. As examples, Jess Parker alludes to how powerpoint can further engage the learner, and the creative alternative and interactive Prezi may do so also (see this example we created).

*** ‡ twitter teaching and twitter.

** ‡ facebook

Facebook is limiting. I find it hard to utilise for teaching or learning, perhaps I just haven’t worked it out yet. The problem is lots of people are on it, so is the best you can do just use it to catch people attention? There is this though – teacher experimenting with FB (thanks Leigh). I need to think more.

***** ‡ delicious

The best tool ever? Tagging relevant material from anywhere on the web, sharing the resources in all sorts of ways… I love it. Not as good as being able to annotate the same sites and share that as well though, even across a whole class or more… check out Diigo. Diigo could be used very effectively in a tutorial setting and certainly meets many of the principles of the ICT learning design framework and engagement theory through its primary role to collaborate and develop on existing content. Here is a useful post about Diigo and education.

**** voicethread

In a similar way to Diigo, voicethread offers a great opportunity for tutorial settings where students cannot be on-site for tutorials. I won’t repeat a good post I have seen about voicethread on Jess Parker’s blog.

** Virtual worlds

Thanks to the influence of Leigh again, I have been lucky to get along to a talk about the use of Second Life in teaching. The talk focused on work conducted in New Zealand, specifically about the use of this virtual world in midwifery.  It is clear to me how the creation of scenarios in such a world could assist in the immersive education of students. There is however a lot of work required unless you can find a relevant existing and open resource. Admittedly though, I’m not sure about the best ways to find existing second life places and scenarios.  I do think this will be used more in the future however, in part addressing the difficulty institutions often have in meeting course placement requirements.

Insulin pump with infusion set

Research Spotlight – in progress

Ben Rattray, Walter Abhayaratna*, Gordon Waddington, Tegan Meredith*, Nick Ball and Vicki Deakin

Staff  *The Canberra Hospital

Background: In Australia, physical inactivity is attributable to ~$400m per year in direct health care costs, although the indirect costs on society are estimated to be much higher. Physical inactivity can lead to a state of low-grade inflammation associated with many disease states including diabetes. Exercise can reverse this trend and both acute and chronic moderate exercise can reduce systemic inflammation. Specifically relating to metabolic disease states, exercise is known to ameliorate insulin resistance and glucose tolerance. However, compliance remains a major issue in physical activity yielding the health benefit gained from any exercise increasingly important.

Physical activity targeting muscle adaptation is desirable for metabolic disease states such as diabetes because skeletal muscle strongly regulates blood glucose and fat metabolism. At the cellular level eccentric exercise greatly increases stress on the muscle relative to concentric exercise at a lower metabolic and cardiovascular cost. Eccentric exercise thus offers the advantage of limiting many of the risks associated with exercise in at risk populations (i.e. increases in HR and BP) and thus better suited to address complex chronic diseases. A single bout of eccentric exercise can create a state of inflammation and transiently impair insulin-signalling pathways but this negative response is prevented during a second exercise bout. Several positive cellular adaptations can occur after less than a week of eccentric training. These observations suggest a much greater stimulus for adaptation than typically observed during concentric exercise.

Recent research investigating the effect of eccentric exercise training in impaired glucose tolerance has been poorly controlled. Downhill hiking prescribed over two months however has been shown to reduce systemic inflammation markers and may improve insulin resistance in apparently healthy individuals although no direct measure of insulin resistance was carried out. The proposed research will address this gap in the literature.

Plain English: Exercise forms an important part of the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Specific recommendations on the type of exercise that should be performed are less clear. Issues relating to exercise prescription include potential complications of exercise and compliance to an exercise program. Eccentric contractions occur during exercise when the muscle is lengthening, such as during weight training or walking down stairs or downhill. This can result in some initial muscle soreness but research suggests that eccentric exercise may provide a strong stimulus for positive adaptations to the muscle, resulting in improved glucose control and health outcomes. It is also thought that the improvements experienced during this type of exercise will be greater than those of other types of exercise at a similar heart rate level. Greater health benefits may be gained from less physical activity, promoting increased compliance to exercise programs. This project will assess how your glucose control and markers of inflammation respond to a two week bout of either concentric of eccentric cycle training.

Links: Blog post, in the news blog post, another in the news blog post.