The COVID-19 pandemic has forced extraordinary changes in work and school culture around the world. School closures have forced teachers to find innovative and effective online learning formats. The continued stay-at-home and sedentary lifestyles that have emerged during the pandemic have highlighted the importance of exercise to manage stress, maintain sanity, prevent muscle atrophy, and stay healthy.

 

Teachers have always played an important role in encouraging students to exercise. During the school closure, the reduction in teacher-student interaction made this goal difficult to achieve. During the epidemic, students and their guardians continued to stay at home, and the safest place for exercise happened to be at home. However, how to encourage children to exercise at home is challenging for parents.

 

Technology has brought our communities to a new and choreographed interactive platform. Physical education teachers can upload daily training and allow students to exercise at home using simple equipment. However, without research-based implementation strategies, the effectiveness of these activities will be questionable and their wide application in different scenarios will be limited.

 

The amount of research on exercise motivation based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) continues to grow. SDT advocates a motivational approach that promotes beneficial behavioral outcomes by satisfying three innate psychological needs: autonomy , competence, and relatedness . In the past, there was limited research on the role of guardians in improving children's physical activity levels and motivations using SDT. Therefore, "A+Games" (i.e. this study: Online SDT Informed Intervention Motivates Children to Exercise at Home: A RCT Study) hopes to provide theoretical evidence for online sports activities through research, understand how to design activities based on children's basic psychological needs, and enhance guardians' (parents') understanding of home exercise, which can ultimately improve children's physical activity levels through family as a medium. This information is also of great reference value for schools to deal with emergencies due to severe weather or any social changes.