Dr.Hab., Associate Professor R.S. Nagovitsyn¹
Dr.Hab. E.A. Rassolova²
Dr.Hab., professor S.Yu. Senator³
Associate professor, PhD I.I. Torbina^3
1Glazov State Pedagogical Institute. n.a. V.G. Korolenko, Glazov
²Judicial board on civil cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Moscow
³Moscow State Humanitarian University n.a. M.A. Sholokhov, Moscow

Keywords: web portal, technology, website, mobile learning, physical culture, sport, fitness, students, GTO qualification test, mobile applications

Introduction

It is the intellectual products of innovative initiatives that are playing an increasingly important role in the process of the ongoing social and economic reforms. In this situation, a key factor for the Ready for Labour and Defence GTO Complex being implemented on a most efficient basis is an active and competitive citizen whose competences are formed and excelled in the education process and labour career. It should be noted in this context, however, that the production and education sectors as key fields of the process are being managed in an increasingly discordant manner as there is no interaction mechanism in place to duly harmonize processes in both of the sectors for the benefit of a dedicated, workable, physically and spiritually developed personality formation process. This contradiction cannot but gives rise to a variety of problems and challenges than need to be addressed by innovative solutions since the traditional approaches have proved to be mostly irrelevant and incapable to solve them. One of the promising ways to solve these problems is to offer an efficient service providing mechanism for the physical culture, sports and fitness sectors with the relevant process and result management capacity – that may be achieved by means of a new web portal designed to train students for the GTO qualification tests with a due emphasis on the users’ demand meeting agenda and with consideration for the variation trends of the users’ preferences.

Relevance of the subject

The problems and challenges of youth health protection and improvement have always been rated among the top priorities by any human society. As things now stand, it should be acknowledged with regret that young people are only hearing empty talks and calls for physical development and health improvement although the actual social environment and real practice provide no motivations whatsoever; and health study reports show alarming statistics of the public health deterioration, mental and emotional burnouts, growing cardiovascular, chronic and infectious disease incidence rates in almost every community across the country [1, 3].

Many studies have provided multiple evidence that it is the ongoing active urbanization, industrialization and research-and-technological achievements in every aspect of human life that once triggered and now only build up the multiple problems associated with the chronic hunger for motion; and this hunger manifests itself in hypodynamia that is rapidly expanding and growing among young people as the most vulnerable group. Mass expansion and application of modern information technologies, on the one hand, effectively alienates young students from physical education, sport and fitness exercises and, on the other hand, the same technologies on the whole and mobile devices in particular, if prudently applied for the benefit of the physical education, sport and fitness purposes, may provide motivations for more active lifestyles encouraging the physical development agenda and good health standards among the young people. Special role and a top priority in this process will be given to mobile tools applicable for the youth physical education encouragement and management process – based, among other things, on the concepts and technologies designed to encourage and facilitate students’ training for the Russian Physical culture and Sport Ready for Labour and Defence GTO Complex qualification tests using the relevant mobile applications supported by special mobile content which can be found in the Internet and applicable for the GTO qualification tests [2, 6].

Objective of the study was to develop and test by experiments – based on comprehensive analysis of the available research developments and concepts with concern to the mobile toolkits applications for the purposes of physical education, sports, and fitness promotion and facilitation – a new students’ training technology provided by special web portal designed to help the young people get trained for the GTO qualification tests.

Current status of the issue in the studies and developments

The study was based on the modern information technology applications in the educational sector (by G.A. Bordovskiy, Ya.A. Vagramenko, A.D. Ivannikov, V.G. Kinelev, K.K. Kolin, A.A. Kuznetsov, M.P. Lapchik, I.V. Robert, B.Ya. Sovetov, Bell D., Masuda Y., Toffler A. et al.); studies of theory and practice of the Internet applications for informational support of education and human development process (by A.D. Ivannikov, T.V. Reger, V.I. Soldatkin, A.N. Tikhonov et al.); studies under the theory of programming (by V.E. Zhuzhzhalov, I.O. Odintsov, Dijkstra E.W. et al.); study reports on fundamentals of remote/ mobile education (by I.N. Golitsyna, V.A. Kuklev, S.V. Titov, Sinclair A., Kay А.K., Sharples M., Traxler J.B. et al.); studies to help form didactic resources based on the modern information and communication technologies and mobile education technologies (by A.A. Andreev, M.P. Moiseeva, E.S. Polat et al.); studies in the field of modern information technology applications for the sports education process (by Y.D. Zheleznyak, V.V. Zaytseva, V.E. Zaglada, P.K. Petrov, V.S. Rodnov, M.M. Chubarov et al.) including video-hosting resources like YouTube for the popular physical education purposes (by Quennerstedt М. et al.); and studies of mobile content application under the regular physical education curricula of educational establishments (by Leight J., Nichols R., Forrest G., Wei Z. et al.).

Methodology and subject of the study. The study was performed in the following two stages.

At the Stage One, organizational aspects were addressed with top priority being given to the frame design technology for the youth training for the GTO qualification tests using mobile tools, through a pilot project of the web portal being implemented including special websites that provide interactive information services on the GTO qualification tests supported by special mobile training curricula for every relevant physical education/ sport/ fitness sector and with the service promotion tools to attract the potential users. At this stage, the following methods were designed and implemented: service modelling, design, analysis, synthesis, generalization, systemization, classification, algorithmic structuring and programming methods.

At the main Stage Two, the web portal was further developed and supported by a set of mobile application tools added to the system, with different platforms for mobile gadgets being provided to encourage and facilitate the students’ own learning activity to master theory and practice of the relevant physical education/ sport/ fitness sectors of top priority for the youth training for the GTO qualification tests. At this stage, the following methods were designed and implemented: algorithmic structuring and programming; innovative components commercialization and advertising methods; empirical methods of the physical development/ performance/ health rating tests; statistical processing and quality assessment methods to analyse results of the experiment; interviews; questionnaire surveys; and educational experiment.

At the Stage One, we developed a few special websites (namely gto18.ru, mobile-coach.ru and alangasar.su) providing training services for the GTO qualification tests. Key technical specifications of these websites versus the existing similar systems including the global ones are the following:

• Special interactive information service for the GTO qualification tests, see Figures 1-3 hereunder:

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

• Interactive service for a physical education teacher with the service tools for the trained group performance monitoring and testing, see Figures 4-5 hereunder;

Figure 4

Figure 5

• Interactive service for the trained group performance monitoring and testing with the relevant tools for the informal and formal test ratings (non-approved and approved by the teacher, respectively);

• The above test-based rating service tools provide the means for the selective GTO qualification tests supported by the relevant optimized monitoring tools;

• Every client is offered herein his/her own individual mobile training cycle designed based on the individual GTO qualification test rates, see Figure 6 hereunder:

Figure 6

• The service software offers a special process timing tool to help control the training process loads with due account of the human physiology basics, i.e. with the training loads being prudently scheduled and combined with the rest periods when different physical exercises are performed;

• Application tools offered by the web portal are designed to support many activities including fitness, sport games, track and field disciplines and martial arts;

• Application tools offered by the web portal are interactive that means that every user can design his/her own system of physical exercises using a special service kit available in the website contents;

• The web portal offers a special service that enables the user to contract a leading specialist in the field of physical education/ sport/ fitness and obtain an individual mobile training program for the GTO qualification tests;

• The individual training program can operate online that means that the user does not need to download anything and can manage his/ her training process using any gadget with the Internet access (Windows, iPad, iPhone, Android using gadgets etc.) [4].

At Stage Two, we performed progress monitoring and assessed the efficiency of the web portal experimental implementation project to train students for the GTO qualification tests using a set of scientific methods to: assess and rate personal physical culture levels of the users through, among other things, educational surveys and tests; psycho-physiological condition and performance diagnostics tools; mathematical statistics methods to determine significance of the differences using mean square values; questionnaire surveys; special authors’ diagnostic tools to rate the personal physical culture levels and needs of the users based on their social networking data on the Vkontakte [In Contact] website; motivation grouping of users based on their motivations for the physical education exercises, with their knowledge rating/ monitoring capacity in the context of the GTO qualification tests [5].

Subject to the study was a sample of 146 students of different ages and both sexes. The sample was divided for the purposes of the experiment into the following two groups: study group composed of 78 active users of the new web portal; and the reference group of 68 people involved in physical education/ sport/ fitness exercises albeit non-supported by the authors’ mobile services.

Study results and discussion

Having completed the questionnaire surveys of the groups through the Internet at the preliminary and main stages of the training process, we found that the study group performance – as compared to the reference group – was better on average by 32% in terms of the motivation, physical and cognitive aspects as verified by the personal physical culture ratings. The survey showed the study group versus the reference group having higher numbers of the high-rated (22%) and average-rated (43%) individuals (as per the personal physical culture development rating tests) upon completion of the experiment. The number of low-rated (by the physical culture development rating tests) individuals (35%) in the study group after the experiment was found to drop lower than that in the reference group.

The above physical culture development rating tests are found indicative of the experimental web portal service for students’ training for the GTO qualification tests being efficient. The physical culture development rating tests of the users versus non-users of the new mobile technologies give the grounds to come to the following conclusions:

• The mobile technologies provide new toolkits for efficient formation of individual members of information society that offers the relevant educational environment free of any time- and place-specific limitations;

• Modern portable mobile gadgets gradually take on the role of assistant educators for the students by providing readily available educational and consulting services in any challenging life situation;

• The modern portable mobile gadgets owned and used by every young person today provide ample opportunities and services both for the individual and educator-assisted physical education/ sport/ fitness programs by providing access to a wide variety of educational, sport and other facilities and tools to efficiently control and support off-class physical education and sport activities of students and, as a result, help shape up the physical-culture-centred lifestyles in the students’ communities.

Conclusion

Modern mobile technologies applied for the purposes of the public demand for the mass physical culture being duly met by timely and high-quality services flexibly tailored to the individual needs, interests and resources of the target groups may be highly effective for the performance monitoring and progress control of the Physical Culture and Sport Ready for Labour and Defence GTO Complex promotion initiatives. Different mobile devices viewed as information sources for the target groups’ training for the GTO qualification tests will help develop the relevant service market based on special PR services in the physical education, sport and fitness sectors designed with due consideration for the classification criteria, the consumer demand for and the infrastructural nature and role of such services.

In this context, the newly developed web portal for the students’ training for the GTO qualification tests using the modern mobile technologies based on the relevant mobile application services to help students in their physical education and sport needs and activities – will be highly efficient in solving the problems of inadequate motor activity of the young people, with the services being focused on the health protection, improvement and the individual physical-culture-centred lifestyle formation missions designed to support the natural self-improvement and self-discovery aspirations of young people.

References

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Corresponding author: romanagovitsin@rambler.ru