Wednesday 20 April 2011

My Plan

Hi all

After much reading of blogs ( and very little writing) and a lot of thinking I am now reasonably comfortable in the concept of my plan for FL.  I have  decided on attempting to develop a plan for an audience that we do not currently target or have much interaction with. This will be a new course aimed at new students who would not traditionallly engage with OP. I have decided not to look at existing courses and modify.
 There are two key drivers for me in making this decision. One is to support those learners ( who I know anectodeally) are keen to gain more skills and knowledge but who do not have the time or resources t ostudy in a traditional manner.
The second driver is to look at attracting new and different clientele into OP.
The plan I will be developing will be based on developing resources and learning material t osupport volunteer coaches.
The reason we need to increase flexibility of course design are two fold;
1) the vast majority of these people will never make a living ( career ) out of sports coaching, they need paid employment (or other income) to live.
2) regardless of extra qualifications and skills gained there is still  a very small percentage of paid coaches, therefore one could argue there is little incentive to invest more ( of their precious) time and money into gaining a qualification (or further quals).

Therefore we need to meet their needs by designing courses that are flexible and student centered. An interesting aspect I will be covering is the concept of    

3 comments:

  1. Sounds really clear Roger, great to read your about your ideas

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  2. This is an excellent direction to head in Roger. Perhaps in the spirit of open education and collaboration, you could harness the knowledge of a range of sporting people to assist. Some may be willing to contribute time and information to help share the expertise. others may be willing to act as mentors or speakers...and then of course you may need sponsorship.

    The simplest and cheapest way would be to move away from the course idea as such (because it probably doesn't fit the TEC criteria not being a qual), and set up a "Community of Practice" using either a blog or wiki or both as the website on which to base this initiative...then add other tools as the need arises. What do you reckon?

    In any case this beginning idea for a plan has a lot of merit.

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  3. Hi Roger, this sounds really interesting and good for you and OP.

    Thinking about sports coaches brought back a reasonably distant memory of sport... I remember my hockey coach who used to gather us players up in her garage once a week. Her husband had made a ply wood cover for their pool table and marked it up as a hockey pitch. We use diffent colured beer bottle tops to represent players and used to mock up a game by moving the tops around as players on the pitch. This hands on learning was a great way to visualise and learn about game plans...

    My hockey coach was creative and vibrant person dedicated to the sport and our team. There must be a lot of other people out there like her willing to get involved.

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