The impact of recreational sports in numbers of functional variables and the results of academic achievement for students of the University of Technology

Abstract

In recent decade, weakness, slackness, and bad health are the common characteristics of individuals, consequently, they cannot endure an hour of daily pressure in their lives. Since education is considered one of the most important human systems in contemporary societies, this study aims to identify the impact of entertaining sport in a number of functional variables such as heart rate, number of breathing times, test of Air ability PWC 170, test of oxygen capability VO2 max, and the results of the academic achievement for the students of the university of technology. The researcher applied the experimental method to first year students of engineering construction and building department, university of Technology. The number of the sample was 150 students of academic year 2010/2011.This number is reduced to 100 after excluding of athletes, non-passing students, and pilot study sample of students. The sample was divided randomly into two groups, experimental and control, each one has 50 students. Having checked the equality only in previous tests, since achievement of the students is zero at the beginning of the academic year, of physiological variables between the two groups , the experimental not the control group was subjected to the entertaining program .the results were processed statistically after finishing the program. The researcher found that the experimental group subjected to aforementioned program had achieved better results than the control group in both physiological variables and academic achievement. Consequently, the researcher recommended to focus on entertaining activities for university students because such activities play important role in improving the functional variables and academic achievement, in addition to that, the researcher also recommended to bring back the lessons of physical education at universities due to their positive impact on students.