Effects of a digitally delivered low-dose physical activity intervention on academic burnout and student engagement in university students

This research looked into the impacts of a digital and low-intensity physical activity intervention on first year college students' physical activity levels, academic burnout, and student engagement. To achieve this, a quantitative single-group pretest-posttest method was utilized, and out of the entire student population of PATHFIT 1 in a public university situated in the Philippines, 120 students were randomly selected. During the 8-week intervention period, participants received daily digital prompts that encouraged them to engage in 30 minutes of low to moderate physical activities. The participants were required to record their activities using the MyFitnessPal application. Modified versions of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, the student version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale were used to assess physical activity, academic burnout, and student engagement, respectively. To analyze the data, Paired Samples t-test and Pearson Correlation were used. The results showed that participants' levels of physical activity and student engagement, emotional exhaustion, and academic burnout showed a statistically significant change in the negative direction. This was attributed to the fact that physical activity was found to be positively correlated to student engagement and negatively correlated to academic burnout. The results of this study are indicative that in the context of higher education, providing low-intensity and flexible physical activity coupled with digital prompts can promote student wellbeing, even with a pre-experimental design.