SS 290 PRINCIPLES OF MOVEMENT CONTROL & SKILL LEARNING

SPRING 2010
Department of Exercise, Sport, & Leisure Studies

Professor: Dr. Jeffrey T. Fairbrother Office: HPER 343

Telephone: (865) 974-3616 (office) E-mail: jfairbr1@utk.edu
Classroom: HPER 232 Office Hours: Wed 1:30-2:30 PM
Meetings: TR 9:40-10:55 AM Thu 2:00-3:30 PM

Graduate Assistant: Dave Laughlin

dlaughl2@utk.edu

UT CATALOG COURSE DESCRIPTION

The following is taken straight from the UT Undergraduate Catalog:

Theories and principles explaining the performance and learning of skilled actions.
Emphasis placed on the consideration of how factors related to the learner, the task, and
the performance context influence instructional decisions. Registration Restriction(s):
Minimum student level – sophomore; exercise science or recreation and leisure studies
majors.

Once you get past the formal language, I hope you can see that the topics in this course have
direct application to your everyday life and professional development.

PURPOSE AND CONTENT OF COURSE

I designed this course to introduce you (ES and RLS majors) to concepts and principles of motor
behavior that will help you understand the major factors to consider when working in settings
that involve motor skills. These settings include a huge proportion of our activities because
movement contributes to virtually all aspects of our lives and many professions (e.g., exercise
training, rehabilitation, therapy, physical education, industrial training, coaching, dance
instruction, and art instruction).

The content of this course will repeatedly illustrate the principles that govern how people
interact with task demands in a variety of performance settings. You’ll hear me refer to these
three general factors over and over during the semester—person, task, setting (or PTS). You will
learn about the basic capabilities and limitations of people that impact how they control their
movements, the ways they can benefit from motor skill training, and various factors that can
influence motor performance (for better or worse).

MY CONTRIBUTION
I view my role in this course as one of a facilitator who creates different opportunities for you to
learn about the principles of motor behavior and how they apply in practical settings. The
primary way we will accomplish this is through our use of selected assignments from Practical

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Laboratory Activities, which I wrote as a supplement to your textbook. I designed the lab
activities to do four different but related things.

First, some of the labs directly illustrate a principle of motor behavior such as speed-accuracy
trade-offs.

Second, some of the labs focus on giving you first-hand experience with the types of procedures
researchers used to discover principles of motor behavior. Some principles are fairly difficult to
demonstrate in a classroom setting, but these procedural labs will help you understand how
experiments are designed to test the effects of a specific factor while controlling for other factors
that might confound our interpretation of the results. I think these labs are particularly important
for future practitioners in movement-related fields.

Third, some of the labs ask you to apply concepts from the textbook to realistic settings, which
will help you become a practitioner who bases decisions on sound evidence-based information.

Fourth, all of the labs have a write-up section that gives you the opportunity to discuss the
textbook’s description of a given principle. These exercises will help you build a strong
understanding of the material in the textbook. In cases when your own results do not match what
would be expected from reading the textbook, you will identify and discuss some of the factors
that might have been present in the classroom setting to influence your results.

Of course, part of my role will be to evaluate your performance in the course. The evaluations
are described below. In addition to evaluating your performance, I will also do the following:

1. Give you additional information to clarify material in the labs and textbook (e.g.,
lectures, discussions, demonstrations, and answers to your questions)
2. Help you complete the lab activities
3. Help you make connections between the lab activities and the material in the textbook
4. Help you focus your studies and prepare for exams

COURSE ORGANIZATION
This course follows the chapters in the required textbook (see below). Lectures, discussions, in-
class activities, and assignments are all meant to help you learn the material presented in the
course. We will consider the textbook as our primary source of information and use the other
experiences to deepen your understanding of topics beyond what you would likely get by just
reading the book.

With your help, I will also try to provide additional information to put the information from the
book into contexts that make sense for you. Your comprehension of course material will be
evaluated using the scores you achieve on the laboratory activities, three examinations, and a
variety of other assignments. An optional comprehensive final will also be available to those
students whose grades might benefit from taking it.

LEARNER OBJECTIVES*

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Note: To achieve the objectives listed below, I may need to adapt the contents of this syllabus
and the course. I will not make changes unless I believe they will have a positive influence on
the direction of the course or are critically important to your learning. You can be assured that
treating you fairly will always be an important part of my consideration regarding any possible
change.

So, here are the objectives. After successfully completing this course, you will be able to:
1. Describe and explain the principles and processes underlying skilled performance
2. Describe and explain the factors that practitioners should consider when diagnosing,
designing, and assessing learning experiences
3. Describe and explain the elements of effective instructional plans for assisting an
individual in learning or improving a selected skill

REQUIRED TEXT AND SUPPLEMENT

Schmidt, R.A., & Wrisberg, C.A. (2008). Motor Learning and Performance: A Situation-Based
Learning Approach, 4th Edition. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Fairbrother, J.T. (2008). Practical Laboratory Activities. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

REQUIRED EQUIPMENT
Calculator (for basic arithmetic)
Stopwatch (must record to the 1/100th of a second)

COURSE WEBSITE
This course will utilize a blog (http://ss290.posterous.com/) and the UT Blackboard system
(http://online.utk.edu/).

EVALUATION
Google Reader Assignment 10%
Online Assignments 10%
Labs 20%
Exams (3 plus optional final) 60%

GRADING
A 90-100% C+ 77-79% F Below 60%
B+ 87-89% C 70-76%
B 80-86% D 60-69%

DISABILITIES NOTE
Please speak with the instructor as soon as possible if you have a disability that may require
assistance or accommodations, or you have questions related to any accommodations for testing,
note takers, readers, etc. Students may also call Disability Services at 974-6087.

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ACADEMIC POLICIES & PROCEDURES
Please see the Undergraduate Catalog and Hilltopics for university academic policies and
procedures. Please refer to the UT Info section of the course Blackboard Website. In this
section, you will find important UT policies regarding the honor code and final exam policy as
well as useful links to the catalog, Hilltopics, and other UT Webpages.

DESCRIPTION OF EVALUATIONS

Google Reader Assignment (10%)

For this assignment, you will first establish a Google Reader account (www.google.com/reader)
and subscribe to the course blog located at http://ss290.posterous.com/. Announcements and
general communications will be delivered via this blog. Your reader subscription will
automatically update your account and indicate when a new post has been submitted.

Throughout the course of the semester, you will also subscribe to 10 additional blogs that
provide information that can help you develop professionally. See the schedule for due dates. I
will post an entry on the course blog asking you to submit a comment about your subscription
that is due. In your comment, you will tell me and the rest of the class (and the entire world,
actually) which blogs you have subscribed to (with URLs so others can subscribe if they are
interested) and describe how these new subscriptions will benefit your professional development.

For each new blog subscription, briefly describe the blog. Tell us about its general focus and the
type of information it delivers. Also give us a specific example that shows how reading this blog
can be helpful. The most common way of doing this will be to point us to a helpful article on the
blog and tell us something like, “Hey, I just read this article at MikeReinold.com about rehab
following arthroscopic shoulder surgery (http://tinyurl.com/y8qm8st). He writes about the
controversy over shoulder rehab and describes what he thinks are the three most important
aspects of shoulder rehab. If you are interested in PT, check it out”.

Note: The URL for the article I mentioned above was quite long and so I used a URL shortening
service that can be found at http://tinyurl.com/. Make sure you do this when you need to link to
pages with long URLs.

Online Assignments (10%)

From time to time, I will post an assignment on the course blog asking you to complete a short
assignment online. These assignments will vary depending upon current events that occur as the
semester progresses. Typical examples might include watching a video, visiting a website,
responding to a survey, and posting comments in response to a question.

Labs (20%)
Many of our days will be spent completing one of labs from Practical Laboratory Activities that
is related to the chapter we are currently covering. During most of these activities you will work
with a partner and collect data from one another (one of you will act as an “experimenter” and
one as the “participant”, and then you will switch roles). You can access Practical Laboratory
Activities on the Human Kinetics Website using the password provided in your textbook. In
preparation for class, read the assigned lab carefully and bring a copy with you to class.

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Exams (60%)
There will be three written examinations and one optional comprehensive final examination.
Each of the examinations will test your knowledge of course content and your capability to apply
this knowledge in realistic scenarios or examples. I typically use a short-answer format for
exams, but will give you the specific details regarding format as the exam approaches. When
taking an exam, you should always keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to clearly illustrate to
me that you understand the course material related to the question you are answering.

In my experience, the best way to do this is to cover everything in the following list.
• Make sure you address all of the elements of the question
• Explain your answers; don’t just make statements and assume that I know what you mean
• Give one or more examples that clearly illustrate your points

Important Note Regarding Preparing for Exams: Many of our day-to-day activities in class
will focus on labs from Practical Laboratory Activities. These activities were designed to help
you understand the material in the textbook, but they do not cover all of the important concepts
on which you will be tested. In preparing for exams, you should focus on learning the concepts
presented in the textbook and by the instructor.

Use the lab activities as a supplement to enhance your understanding of the topics in the book. If
you rely primarily on the labs, you will most likely be unprepared to do well on the exams. Of
course, you should always feel free to ask me questions as you prepare for the exams (or at any
other time for that matter).

PARTICIPATION
Your participation is an essential component of the learning process in this course and so I
expect you to come to class ready to actively contribute to all classroom activities. Make sure
you understand assigned readings and labs well enough to contribute meaningfully when we
meet.

If there is something you don’t understand, you can still contribute by asking a well thought out
question. After all is said and done, I want you to show me that you are engaged in the learning
process and that you act in ways that benefits everyone’s learning goals.

EXPECTATIONS
My expectations for you this semester are as follows. I expect you to:
• Behave in ways that support learning—yours and your classmates’
• Ask for help when you need it
• Do your own work. You are free to consult with others as you think about your
assignments, but the work you turn in should be yours
• Turn in all of your assignments on time (Note: I will not accept late assignments)
• Arrive at class on time and ready to participate

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SCHEDULE
Schedule is tentative & will change if needed. Read assignments before coming to class.

Lab Blog
Date Day Topic Reading Lab
Due Due
xi-xv
14 R Introduction Lab
Intro
Jan 19 T 3-11 1.1 sign-up
Ch. 1: Getting Started
21 R 11-21
26 T 25-39 2.1 1.1
Ch. 2: Processing Information and Making Decisions
28 R 39-57 1
2 T 63-89 2.1
Ch. 3: Sensory Contributions to Skilled Performance
4 R 89-101 3.2 2
9 T Review
11 R EXAM 1: Chapters 1-3
Feb
16 T 105-123 4.1 3.2
Ch. 4: Movement Production and Motor Programs
18 R 123-129 3
23 T 133-140 4.1
Ch. 5: Principles of Motor Control & Movement …
25 R 141-157 5.2 4
2 T 161-174 6.1
Ch. 6: Individual Diff. & Motor Abilities
4 R 175-183 5.2 5
9 T
SPRING BREAK
11 R
Mar 16 T Review 6.1
18 R EXAM 2: Chapters 4-6
23 T 189-203 7.1
Ch. 7: Preparing for the Learning Experience
25 R 203-215 6
30 T 219-238 7.1
Ch. 8: Supplementing the Learning Experience
1 R 238-251 8.2 7
6 T 255-269 9.1
Ch. 9: Structuring the Learning Experience
8 R 270-279 8.2 8
13 T 283-296 10.2 9.1
Ch. 10: Providing Feedback During the Learning …
15 R 297-317 9
Apr 20 T Review
22 R EXAM 3: Chapters 7-10
11/1
27 T Ch. 11: Facilitating Learning & Performance 323-349 10.2
2
11/1
29 R Ch. 12: Applying the Principles of Skill Learning 351-363 10
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No Class (Finals); Lab 11/12 due via email by 11:00
Ma 4 T 11/12
am
y
7 F Optional Final: Chapters 1-12 (8:00-10:00 AM)