Engagement with the TransformUs website during national secondary school scale-up reflected the opportunistic and self-directed nature of engagement with online initiatives in real-world settings, mostly brief single-visit use, and dissemination should ensure meaningful engagement with web-based resources rather than ending when users receive the materials.
Only 200 secondary school staff from 6 Australian states and 2 territories registered for the TransformUs website over 22 months, and just 110 of them could be tracked by Google Analytics.
Overall engagement was predominantly single-visit, with a median of 1 session per user.
Users viewed a median of 5 pages and spent a median of about 8 minutes on the website across the study period.
Page reach was highest for general information and teaching resources pages.
Engagement duration differed by state or territory, being longer in the Northern Territory and South Australia than in Victoria.
Schools with high student-teacher ratios had shorter engagement durations than schools with low student-teacher ratios.
Schools with medium academic achievement had higher odds of accessing implementation resources than low-achieving schools.
The authors concluded that engagement reflected opportunistic, self-directed use of online initiatives in real-world settings, and that scale-up dissemination should ensure meaningful engagement beyond providing materials.
This study looked at how school staff used the TransformUs website, a resource for helping secondary schools in Australia increase physical activity and reduce sitting time among students. Over about 22 months of national rollout, 200 staff (school leaders, PE teachers, and other teachers) registered, and usage could be tracked for 110 of them. Most people visited only once, and about a third never got past the registration page. On average, users looked at around 5 pages and spent about 8 minutes on the site. General information and teaching resources pages were the most visited. Some differences emerged between schools. Staff in the Northern Territory and South Australia spent more time on the site than those in Victoria, while staff in schools with many students per teacher spent less time. Schools with medium academic achievement were more likely than low-achieving schools to open implementation resources, though the small sample makes this estimate imprecise. This research suggests that when school programs are offered online during large-scale rollouts, many staff only briefly explore them on their own. The authors argue that simply handing out materials is not enough, and that rollout efforts may need to encourage deeper, more meaningful use. They also call for future work to measure richer forms of engagement and to better understand what drives it in schools.
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Upload Your LabsFitriani A, Contardo Ayala A, Koorts H, Lai S, Salmon J. (2026). Secondary School Staff Engagement With a School-Based Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior Initiative Website: Implementation Trial During National Scale-Up.. JMIR formative research. https://doi.org/10.2196/95250