The Influence Of Motıon Games In Students’ Personal Development

Abstract

The university stage is a change stage in the lives of young people, both on psychosomatic and on the relational-social level. The natural question that derives as a consequence of these changes would be: Are there significant differences in the results recorded to prove that motion games adapted to the age period would be necessary for the students’ personal development at this age stage? The present research was based on the hypothesis according to which weekly applied motion games on the students would be a positive starting point in their personal development, while their absence would produce a visible differentiation between individuals with a negative effect in the personal relational development. “Motion Games” are well received regardless of the students’ age due to the fact that they support personal development. The absence of motion games produces a visible differentiation with a negative effect on personal development.

Keywords: Personal developmentPhysical Educationstudents

1. Introduction

"We were created to succeed, we have the necessary inner strength, we are equipped with all

the physical, mental and emotional resources that we need in order to take control of our lives and

build our lives the way we want," stated Anthony Robbins in the preface of the book Discover your

inner strength - 2002.” (Robbins, 2002). “In the context of recreation sport …… of rehabilitation,

the connection between sport and physical…” education….” is important as it serves as a bridge

beyond the physical limitations ……with which …. individuals must grapple in their lives.”

(Bechar, & Grosu, 2016). It is said about us, as species, that we were created to win and not to

regard ourselves as victims, by remaining helpless in front of the impediments that we have to face.

But one cannot become a winner without realizing that he/she has to work with himself/herself, to

have certain activities that eliminate routine and to become different from others. This aspect,

according to experts, represents the concept of “Personal Development”, also named “self help”,

(Robbins, 2002), in Romanian having the meaning “help yourself”.

2. Hypothesis

This research started from the hypothesis according to which the existence of motion games

in the lesson plan for each week module of the students, namely in the second sequence of the

lesson – also entitled harmonious physical development – would accelerate the phenomenon named

personal development, due to the abilities of involving the individual directly into the action, while

the absence of a motion game from the second part would produce a visible differentiation between

students within the group. The absence of the second part would also slower the phenomenon of

personal development.

3. Methods

4. Research content

We mention that the present research is more of an observation study, having the purpose of

observing the influence of motion games systematically applied in the students’ Physical Education

classes, as a starting point.

Another topic of the research is the observation of the effects deriving from the proposed

program, thus we have to mention that we used a special program on the experiment group (GE), a

program that was not included in the activity of control group (GC), based on motion games and

constructive discussions for the formation of personal development, based on the topic “A

challenge”.

We have to mention that motion games are usually found in Physical Education lessons in

the second sequence called – “Preparing the body for effort”. Therefore, to be more precise, more

analytical at this university level – at which we believe that, to be able to define education, students

should follow a classical methodical structure developed in sequences.

Despite possible criticism or contradictions regarding our view, we state that where there are

rules and order, chaos is removed and personal evolution has the possibility to progress, thus

leading in time to personal growth. It is not necessary to follow all the 7/8 sequences, but at least

the first 4 should be fully and exactly followed and performed under the careful supervision and

directions of a teacher or of a member of the didactic staff.

The second module is dedicated to optional sports games, where students have the

opportunity to choose certain sports games, according to their preferences. They are able to form

teams, to socialize, to spend time beneficially from an emotional, motor, and social point of view,

thus stimulating three extremely important fields involved in personal development: mental,

emotional and motor, all of them requiring the participant to work with himself/herself, and through

the self, in other words self-working, therefore creating personal experiences.

We believe that this would be influenced by the engine of contradictions, as feelings are be

different and unique for each individual and cannot be borrowed.

These are achieved by external requirements, “internal possibilities” and skills gained by

each individual due to the amount of information that he assimilates externally or through writing,

to the weekly motric activities systematically combined with motion games in such a manner that

“the child’s natural ability of expression – the game – will be used as an instrument in personal

development” Golu, & Ionita, 2009).

This phenomenon of personal development also entitled “self help” would include,

according to the specialists’ opinion, a series of activities that would help, in time, any individual

who is trying to become a better person: starting with certain aspects that each human being could

do, for example motion, physical exercise, various sports games or sports, reading books about

relationships, socialization, love, communication, creativity and any other area that impresses

people as rational and conscious beings.

If we take into consideration the specialists’ opinions, the five elements considered until

lately fundamental in personal development, namely: reading books, taking courses, suggestive

quotes that can stimulate the mind, motivational films that have an impact on the mind, positive

thinking, all these do not represent a trigger anymore in the complicated mechanism of personal

development.

Other elements are essential, elements that until recently were almost ignored by our society,

because we can talk about personal development only when one directly works with oneself. One

can do this with exercise, various sports games and especially motion games with simple, but

pleasant rules, because they are devoid of aggression, abuse, and allow a recharge with positive

energy, integration into the surrounding reality without fear, and the practice of cognitive,

imaginative and creative skills.

These are qualities that will later lead to intellectual modeling, will mature the individual

and will help him/her take a qualitative leap in his "personal development", resembling the action

of “climbing stairs”, where stairs represent the steps that one has to go through in the process of

becoming more oneself and seeing the place that the individual possesses on the social ladder, in

his/her own evolution.

In order to verify the aforementioned aspects and to improve the image of Physical

Education in general and motion in particular, we designed and completed a special program based

on the motion games adapted to the specific age and faculty (given that we are not an institution in

the field, and students have more than 18 years old).

This program should be interesting for them, should be captivating, therefore it relies on

motion games that stimulate: thinking, responsiveness, mental flexibility, emotion, self-control,

stress relief, satisfaction of the desire for motion, the pleasure of learning, and it systematically

developed, being simultaneously, but differently, applied on two groups, each group having its own

program.

These two groups were:

=An Experiment Group - Group No. I;

=A Control Group - Group No. II.

The program was generically entitled “Motion games" and “A challenge". “Motion games"

was implemented on the experiment group (GE), weekly, in the second sequence of each Physical

Education class. We reserved 10-15 minutes at the end of each class for debates on the lesson,

debates that were constructive, and under a playful manner, “A challenge"was considered a mental

exercise. This process was continued over a year. The program was applied only on the experiment

group – no. I, while the Group Control – No. II did not participate in this program, and they

performed Physical Education classes according to the standard program, namely without motion

games or themed debates. We have to mention that the two groups were randomly chosen from the

Letters and Sciences Faculty.

Surely, there may be objections regarding this research, but one has to take into

consideration that this approach was designed as an observation study, with the purpose of

perceiving whether motion games have an influence of any kind on personal development. They

can be used as such in Physical Education classes for people enrolled in the university program,

because education does not end in high school, especially in this field.

This explanation is related to the debate having the theme “A challenge”, considered a

mental exercise, with the aim of raising the subjects’ awareness concerning the use of terms and the

type of action. This aspect refers to “reading a book“, ”participating in personal development

courses”, “analyzing suggestive quotes that can stimulate the mind”, “motivational movies”, etc.,

and what happens after these actions are performed. The results were recorded in Tables no. 01 and

no. 02 (see details in table below):

Motion games had themes related to personal development. Here are some examples of

motion games and their role in the class: “ Numbers game” – contributes in gaining self control

and reaction control. “Defend the fortress” – contributes to the “leader” behavior. “Ducks and

hunters” – contributes to learning responsibility, developing distributive attention, observation,

observing the behaviour of the opponents but also of the people around them. “Little bird, change

your nest!” – contributes to learning perseverance. “Logs on rolls”- contribute to the development

of courage, and, of course, there any many other examples, but we think these are enough for the

reader to understand our statement.

Through these games, we aimed to stimulate initiative, self-control, responsibility,

perseverance, courage, etc. (Internet - Motroc, 2009), extremely important qualities, necessary in

achieving “self help”. We mention that we reserved 15-20 minutes from the end of every lesson

to discuss about the topic of the lesson and to respond to a challenge exposed in the form of a

statement: “Would you read a book! How would it help you?”; “Do courses help in personal

development?”; “A suggestive quote”; “Physical Exercise”; “Motion Games”. How do these

influence personal development? The results were recorded in Tables no. 01 and no. 02 (see data in

the tables above).

We resume the explanation - These groups were made out of two types of people, namely:

• The Experiment Group – No. I was composed of 44 subjects - students in this

experiment group were given motion games in every class over a year - and a 10-15 minutes

themed debate entitled “A challenge” – considered a mental exercise absolutely necessary in

developing initiative, self control, responsibility, courage, perseverance, etc. Internet - Motroc N.,

L., 2009).

• Control group - No. II was composed of 47 subjects - they participated in Physical

Education classes developed according to the standard methodology, namely without motion games

in the program.

5. Findings and Discussion

In the questionnaire (see Tables no. 01 and 02), questions were organized in such a manner

as to help in the discovery of reality regarding personal development. Research subjects were

organized into two groups. Based on these two groups, we conducted a series of testing at the end

of the academic year (see Tables no. 01 and 02). The opinion of the group was relevant for our

research and was verified with the help of the questionnaire, which represented the barometer in

our research and a manner of verifying the research hypothesis, and the registered indicators were

recorded in Tables No. 01 and 02. In these tables, we recorded and explained opinions for each

item and then analyzed them. One may question the need of two tables for one questionnaire. This

is due to the two types of questions (items) in our research, namely:

A. With closed answer (questions number 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18; see Table - 01)

that showed clear knowledge about the notion of ”personal development”.

B. With open answer (questions number 2, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 - see Table - 02).

These questions allowed us to emphasize the idea that motion games have a positive impact in

realizing the discovery of physical reality, self awareness, and, naturally, for the students’ the

personal development, and relationships between individuals.

We developed two sets of questions (A) – with 11 questions and (B) - with 9 questions, as

described above, some of the questions were marked with an asterisk because they are relevant

questions for our research, which helped us verify each individual’s statement and in Tables 01 and

02 we aimed, as required by the research, to render relevant statistical indicators for personal

development in percentage (%) for all 91 subjects that participated in the experiment. As one may

notice, not all subjects registered similar answers, therefore significant differences appear. This is

the reason for which the number of students who responded with “Yes" or “No" is different from

the number of subjects who entered the research and helped us submit certain information relevant

to personal development (see Tables no. 01 and no. 02 - we abbreviated in Table no. 01 and no. 02

students = s. due to the lack of space). As a result of the recorded data in the two tables and the

survey conducted for the 91 students in the research we observed a difference between the two

groups (GE and GC) (Tables 01 and 02).

In the following lines, we put our observations as a consequence of the questionnaire

analysis:

 The first set of questions - A . - Closed answer: there were 4 questions marked with an asterisk symbol “*” (see Table 01 ). These questions were 1, 11, 12, 13 that showed the starting stage of

personal development for the two groups (GE and GC). Answers are suggestive and we analyzed

them as following:

- For question No. 1 - You know who you really are? - Although we recorded a maximum of 44

subjects, namely (GE) and 47 (GC) with a 100%, who answered “Yes”, when they had to explain

who they were, subjects from the control group (GC) responded “I do not know“, and subjects from

the experiment group (GE) wrote their names as a result, thus managing to identify themselves, and

as a consequence we consider this a step forward in personal development.

- For question No. 11 – Can a motion game be a way of personal development? Explain. The

Experiment Group (GE), with a total of 42 students and a percentage of 95.46%, answered “Yes”

and offered the following explanation: yes, through the developed intuition, behavior when having

to respect rules, acceptance and defeats, that at the end can be seen as a lesson. While the control

group (GC), having a standard program without motion games, and a number of 35 students – a

percentage of 74.46% - answered “No, I do not know”, because they have not realized the

constructive dimension of these games for their personal development.

- Also noticeable discrepancies appear between the two groups and for questions No. 12 and No.

14 , where we have the impact of reading and courses for the process of personal development (see

answers and percentage in Tables no. 01 and 02). As a consequence, the absence of prior training

and information leads to a wrong mentality about things that apparently are used correctly (for

example – “I read to cultivate myself”, reading without implementing the phenomenon that the

reader has just learned does not produce any change, he/she only has the information, but to cause

personal development one has to do something with it and with oneself), and only in this manner

the individual would achieve “personal development”. So none of the phenomena above (reading,

attending personal development courses etc.) used separately in conditions of isolation, can

determine personal development.

It appears that students from the experiment group (GE), as a result of the program

generically entitled “Motion Games” and “A challenge" were those who discovered the truth after

enrolling in the described program, namely that only if one directly works with oneself, personal

development occurs. Therefore, we can sustain and state the aforementioned, given the percentages

recorded in Table No. 01 for the two questions, thus confirming the hypothesis of the research. This

aspect is reinforced by the results recorded and the second set of questions (see Table no. 02).

 B. The second set of questions with open answers (namely questions number 2, 9, 17, 20 - see Table no. 02) allowed us to outline the idea that motion games have a positive impact in

achieving the discovery of physical reality and self awareness, thus leading to the students’

personal development.

 For question no. 2 - How would you describe yourself? - is a mirror for question no. 1 and marks the visible difference between the two groups, hence confirming the research hypothesis.

The 39 students, namely a percentage of 88.63% in the experiment group (GE) said they have

personality; they are sociable, passers trough life. This means they realized the extent of life, the

passage of time and the importance of defined personalities in personal development, while

students from the control group (GC), 40 in number and a percentage of 85.11%, find themselves

at the opposite side, as they describe themselves from a physical point of view as: tall, fat, thin,

dark / brunette, blonde, etc. This is a trivial description without reference to their personality,

indicating immaturity in thinking and a slower rate of personal development. Apart from these

issues, we also mention the answers given for questions no. 17 and no. 20, which leave the topic

open for debate and for everyone interested in researching this issue (see Table no. 02). As one

may observe from the research, human beings were created to succeed, having the necessary

inner strength, but it is not enough to use only reading, attending courses, using quotes, watching

motivational films, using positive thinking for personal development. These are no longer enough

to represent a trigger in the complicated mechanism of personal development, due to the fact that:

reading only helps the mind and the memory and provides information, attending personal

development courses – other people do things for an individual – one receives information about

what personal development means and some methods that have worked for others, not

guaranteed to work for him/her; suggestive quotes represent the wisdom of others, not of the

respective individual, one cannot have the same experience as another person who became wise

by himself/herself; motivational films are experiences that do not belong to the individual and,

according to unwritten laws, a mistake cannot be identically repeated, therefore it can only

remain an example of “what should not be done”. Other elements are essential, which have been,

until recently, almost ignored by our society, namely physical motion, physical exercise, various

sports games and especially motion games with simple rules of cognitive capacities, imaginative,

creative practice, these representing qualities which will later lead to maturing, to the

evolutionary leap, because only at this point, in this context – of the individual working with

oneself, active on all levels and learning that personal development is about him/her. Only where

one directly works with the self, we may say that we have personal development, otherwise being

nothing more than exercises, and in motion games we fulfill the work with the self. (See the Fig. 01 )

See Full Size >

6. Conclusions

Weekly applied motion games in the students’ schedule would be a starting point with a

positive effect in their personal development. We believe that the psychological development

would be influenced by the engine of contradictions, achieved by external requirements, “internal

possibilities” and skills gained by each individual due to the weekly motric activities systematically

combined with motion games, because they can stimulate the mind and help their personal

development

People were created to succeed, having the inner strength, although it is not enough in

personal development only to use reading books, to attend courses about personal development, to

have suggestive quotes that can stimulate the mind, to watch motivational movies with an impact

on the psyche, positive thinking, as these no longer represent the trigger in the complicated

mechanism that determines personal development:

Reading only helps the mind and the memory and provides information, attending personal

development courses – other people do things for an individual – one receives information about

what personal development means and some methods that have worked for others, not guaranteed

to work for him/her; suggestive quotes represent the wisdom of others, not of the respective

individual, one cannot have the same experience as another person who became wise by

himself/herself.

None of the mentioned phenomena (reading, attending personal development courses, etc.)

used separately in conditions of isolation, can determine personal development.

It appears that students from the experiment group (GE), as a result of the program

generically entitled “Motion Games“, and “A Challenge” were those who realized the truth

after they entered the described program, namely that only where one work directly with

oneself, we can discuss about personal development. Therefore, we can sustain and state the

aforementioned, based on the percentages recorded in Table No. 01 for the two questions,

thus confirming the research hypothesis.

Other elements are essential, which have been, until recently, almost ignored by our society,

namely physical motion, physical exercise, various sports games and especially motion games with

simple rules of cognitive capacities, imaginative, creative practice, these representing qualities

which will later lead to maturing, to the evolutionary leap.

The absence of motion games from the second link would produce a visible differentiation

of relationship for students in the group, with a regression of the phenomenon of personal

development, thus confirming the research hypothesis.

Only where one directly works with the self, we may say that we have personal

development, otherwise being nothing more than exercises, since personal development is about the

self.

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