The Effects of Desk Cycles in Elementary Children’s Classroom Physical Activity: A Feasibility Study

Children who are overweight or obese exhibit a significant number of health concerns and are more likely to exhibit mental health and academic-related concerns. Thus, finding ways in schools to help them with multiple barriers is ideal. DeskCycles^TM are one possible means for mitigating some of these concerns. There were three major objectives to this study: (a) To evaluate whether the use of DeskCycles^TM increases child physical activity, (b) To determine if DeskCycles^TM are feasible to use in the classroom for both teachers and students, and (c) To evaluate whether student on-task behavior improves or worsens from student use of DeskCycles^TM. Twenty-eight 5^th grade students from two classrooms were randomly assigned to treatment/control conditions wherein the treatment classroom engaged in the use of DeskCycles^TM in their classroom. Both treatment and control classrooms wore wrist accelerometers to measure physical activity. They completed an 11-item feasibility survey regarding the DeskCycles^TM and the intervention teacher participated in a feasibility interview. Results showed no significant differences in physical activity by group, and on-task behavior was significantly lower as time passed during the study. The teacher indicated more barriers to using the DeskCycles^TM, while the students were divided on their perceptions of feasibility. DeskCycles^TM were not an effective intervention for physical activity or behavioral outcomes in this classroom setting. It appears that DeskCycles^TM may not be a beneficial part of the solution for accruing classroom physical activity because they did not generate more physical activity, and students did not demonstrate better behavior while using them.