Effect of sports games on the adaptation of students to the conditions of education at higher education institutions

Abstract

For many freshmen, the first years of higher education are crucial and associated with the emergence of complex and diverse stressful situations in the new learning environment. The introduction of scientifically based measures of pedagogical support for the adaptation component of freshmen into the educational process is becoming an urgent need. The purpose of our study was to experimentally test the effectiveness of the impact of academic physical education classes using sports games, including elements of psychological training, on the intervention of the psychophysiological state of students during the period of adaptation to the conditions of education in university. The study was carried out using the data from Sochi State University. The study involved 32 first-year students aged 17–19 from Sochi State University, who were studying in the field of "teacher education". Testing the level of the psychophysiological state of students was carried out according to the following indicators: determination of the strength of nerve processes by measuring the dynamics of the hand movement rate ("tapping test" from the interpretation by E.P. Ilyin), self-assessment of mental states according to G. Eysenck's test, and diagnostics of mental performance via speed of information processing using the proofreading test of V.Ya. Anfimov. The significance of changes was determined using the Wilcoxon test using a significance of p<0.05. During the experiment, the students experienced a statistically significant decrease in the severity of personal anxiety and frustration. In the final stage of the study, there was a significant improvement in mental performance in terms of information processing speed. In general, our results show the effectiveness of the developed program for correcting the psychophysiological state of students in physical education lessons using sports games.