Physical Activity and Health

Fac. Health, Medicine and Life Sciences

Physical Activity and Health

Full course description

This course will address two major themes that are highly related to each other. The first theme covers the beneficial effects of physical activity on health. Several keynote lectures (1 h) are delivered covering the different health aspects of physical activity including metabolic, cardiovascular and cognitive health and sit-less for health. The second major theme of the course is how physical activity can be accurately measured in daily life. For that, wearable sensors will be used and students will learn about different sensors that are available, how these sensors function and how data from these sensors can be analysed. For this, students will get to design their own research project where they can answer their research question using a tri-axial accelerometer (the MOX).

The course keynote lectures will mainly cover theoretical bases about how physical activity benefits health and how physical activity can be measured. The tutorial/project group meetings will be used to design the research projects, perform measurements, analyse the data and present the project results.

Course objectives

Knowledge and understanding

At the end of this course, students have gained knowledge and understanding of the following topics:

Metabolic, cardiovascular and cognitive health effects of different aspects of physical activity
Basic principles of accelerometry-based motion analysis and activity monitoring
Underlying principles of signal analysis and basic signal processing methods (filtering, differentiation and integration)
Experimental design and analysis aspects of research related to physical activity monitoring.

Applying knowledge

Formulate a relevant research question related to physical activity and design an appropriate research protocol to answer this question
Gathering and post-processing of physical activity data

Making judgements

Choosing the appropriate technique to quantify relevant aspects of physical activity
Judging the methodological quality of studies that use motion sensors
Analysing and interpreting results from a physical activity experiment

Communication

Oral presentation of obtained research data
Writing a scientific report
Collaborating effectively with fellow students and experts

Learning skills

Knowledge about design of experiments/testing (research methods and design)
To test reproducibility and validity of physical activity data
To test sensitivity and specificity of physical activity classification

Physical Activity and Health