Using the Olympic spirit to improve teaching and learning process: the biomechanics Olympic Games.

THE OLYMPIC GAMES started in Athens, on April 6, 1896, inspired by the ancient games held in Olympia (5). After many years, the Olympic Games remain as one of the biggest events in the world. The “Olympic spirit” regards unity among people and nations, mutual respect, and the determinant role of cooperation to achieve success toward a common goal. Some of these qualities are also important in the academic process. Biomechanics is an academic course with important links to the Olympics. It helps in the understanding of how sports gestures are performed, along with its mechanical characteristics, body adaptations, design of equipment, determination of performance indicators, and strategies for injury prevention (10). Biomechanics courses address contents of physiology, anatomy, mathematics, and physics (7). It is common to observe that many students fail biomechanics due to difficulties in following the topics of the course. In this regard, the Olympic spirit could be used to motivate and increase student participation, promoting a more productive course and decreasing failure rate. High failure rate was faced in our institution in the last few years, where biomechanics is part of the curriculum of Physiotherapy and Physical Education. These students take Biomechanics in their first year of undergraduate. The weak educational background is evident among students entering public universities in Brazil (1), and many of them are unable to follow the courses satisfactorily. As a result, the percentage of students who had to retake Biomechanics reached up to 65%. At that moment, we felt that some action was needed. The regular classes, including theoretical (120 min) and practical classes (60 min) plus laboratories, reports, and written exams (4 exams), were not enough to ensure students’ understanding or even to motivate them to go through the contents of the course. Our first action trying to reduce the failure rate was to include a quiz game as part of evaluation process to motivate the students before the final exam (4). We observed positive effects of this activity on failure rate, which dropped from 65% to 45% in 2011. We then included student participation in research projects as part of the course, in an attempt to involve students in laboratory activities, which are known to contribute to the learning experience (3). However, student enrollment in laboratory activities was weak. Our next step, the most successful to the date, was to incorporate some ideals from the Olympic Games, which at that time (2012) were happening in London, to the Biomechanics course. The project was named “Biomechanics Olympic Games” (BOG). BOG was approved by the institutional education board (Institutional Review Board no. 1002316) and established as part of the course content in 2013, representing up to 20% of the students’ final grade. BOG was designed to motivate collaborative work, to increase interest in course topics, and reduce failure rate. Previous research showed that using teaching approaches that focus on collaboration can facilitate students to efficiently receive large amounts of information, which is helpful for completing learning tasks (9). The main purpose of this paper is to describe the Biomechanics Olympic Games and to share with the readers our methods, main results, and experience after inserting this educational project as part of the regular undergraduate Biomechanics course. Our article describes how the BOG had been developed in the previous 4 yr.