Laura Vielbig

The annual event is an opportunity for students to share scholarship and creative work with the university community, and to submit their research projects to a competition among peers.

Vielbig’s poster presentation was based on an ongoing study of accelerometers led by assistant professor of kinesiology Karin Pfeiffer. Accelerometers are devices that are worn and used to measure a person’s level of physical activity.

Vielbig specifically looked at whether children were more active during the structured or unstructured activity times of a group program. Unlike results from previous studies, she found that children were more active during structured activities such as soccer and scarf juggling compared to time periods when they could choose what they wanted to do.

“This may be attributed to the high level of encouragement we gave them during the structured activity,” she said. “Future implications form these results could be to encourage after-school programs to structure their activities more often.”