Clinical trial NCT03087279: Assessing Impact of Active Learning on Student Outcomes: Texas Initiatives for Children's Activity and Nutrition (ICAN)
Official title: A Cluster Randomized Control Trial to Assess the Impact of Active Learning on Child Activity, Attention Control, and Academic Outcomes: The Texas I-CAN Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Physical Activity
Lead sponsor: University of Texas at Austin
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2017-03-22
Enrollment: 2716
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: OTHER

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.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

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

Exclusion Criteria:

* none

Primary outcomes:
measure: Physical activity level
timeFrame: one school week
measure: Time on task
timeFrame: change in time on task from baseline to 15 minutes post academic lesson
measure: Acute academic achievement
timeFrame: change in math and language arts scores from Baseline to 2 weeks
measure: Long-term math achievement
timeFrame: Change in math achievement scores from Baseline to 7 months
measure: Long-term language arts achievement
timeFrame: Change in language arts achievement from Baseline to 7 months
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: UT Austin
name: John B Bartholomew, PHD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Bartholomew JB, Jowers EM, Errisuriz VL, Vaughn S, Roberts G. A cluster randomized control trial to assess the impact of active learning on child activity, attention control, and academic outcomes: The Texas I-CAN trial. Contemp Clin Trials. 2017 Oct;61:81-86. doi: 10.1016/j.cct.2017.07.023. Epub 2017 Jul 22.