Evaluation of assessment techniques for preservice physical education teachers in volleyball skills during blended learning

Abstract

Physical education teacher education (PETE) programs have historically taught both athletic sports and pedagogical techniques; thus, preservice teachers can be equipped with skill learning. Preservice teachers must comprehend sports knowledge and demonstrate acceptable skill performance because they are expected to provide effective instruction and boost student learning. Accordingly, a preservice PE teacher should grasp and teach movement analysis and mechanics. Volleyball movement sequences are particularly applicable for determining whether a performer’s movements are effective and providing feedback to the learners for improved performance. However, PE has increasingly been equipped with online and blended learning environments in recent years. A blended learning environment is a hybrid system combining classroom and online learning that provides the convenience of online courses without sacrificing the complete face-to-face advantages. Therefore, in this study, we aim to analyze the efficiency of preservice PE teachers using self-and peer-assessment techniques for basic volleyball skills in blended learning contexts. The participants were 37 college students (Mage = 19.82 ± 1.32) who enrolled in a blended format volleyball course. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were determined to investigate the relationships between each self-and peer-assessment score across all participants. The results suggested no statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were observed in participants’ volleyball skills analysis during the blended learning course. Our research was undertaken to investigate the self-and peer-assessment competencies of preservice PE teachers’ four fundamental volleyball skills and indicated that they did not have any significant differences in terms of quality of evaluation. Our findings also suggested that blended instruction is an alternative teaching practice that educators have the potential to embrace. The implication of our research may suggest that preservice teachers will understand the appropriate level of sports performance by evaluating how much they and their peers have learned to develop instructional practices and build knowledge for future PE lessons. This understanding can serve as a foundation for future research on blended learning, which will be increasingly used in higher education.