“Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches Can Learn From Video Game Designs

 

Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches Can Learn From Video Game Designs

Here's the link to my detailed notes on this paper

Learning by Design

The Paper in 3 Sentences 🚀

1. The role of coaches has shifted towards being designers of the learning environment. The environment must be designed to promote interactions. The coach is a companion rather than transmitter of knowledge
2. This paper goes through 13 Key Principles that are in video game design that can also influence good practice design
3. The principles are not designed to be used in isolation but rather combined together

🤝Impressions

This paper has highlighted a number of key practice design principles and given some nice examples using a wide range of different sports. Video Games are designed to be engaging and by using some of these principles we can make our own sessions more engaging for our players

It's a very good read and well worth looking back over

🎾 How the paper will influence my coaching

• I need to start introducing more elements of co-design and customisation in practice. The will need to start off a bit structured. Even simple things like giving choices over where they start etc.
• There are a number of different aspects to becoming an ‘intelligent’ performer. “An intelligent performer is an adaptive, engaged and motivated individual who learns quickly and relies on perceptions, cognitions, emotions, and actions to function effectively in a specific environment”

• Giving an identity to the ‘team’ or player can help to shape their intentions. A player that is a finisher when attacking may look for more opportunities to display this behaviour.
• The coach designs problems and the solutions will emerge. I don’t tell them how to solve the problems. While I may have an idea of what possible solutions may emerge the players may come up with unique ways to solve the problem. If they are struggling I can guide them towards possible solutions
• I want my player to be experiencing small levels of frustration with some of the tasks. Make sure that they are being sufficiently challenged in practice and include activities that are just outside their capabilities
• The term ‘Goldilocks’ zone is a nice way to frame the ‘challenge point’ for the players. This zone is where it’s not too hard or too easy.
• Make sure that the players you are working with are playing against lots of different types of players.
• Give athletes more choice on when they can receive the feedback and how they can use the feedback to guide their actions straight away
• Skill is a technique carried out in an environment to solve an emergent problem
• The analogies you use need to have meaning for the players
• The principles are designed to be combined and not used in isolation

🖐Who should read this?

Anybody that is interested in improving their practice design should read this paper. The principles are grounded in an Ecological Dynamics approach. It will allow coaches to use some of the principles to enhance the design of their practices.

🥇 Top Quotes

💡 These ideas, grounded in an ecological dynamics rationale, implicate how learning and practice environments can be understood, progressing from more artificial means of learning by rote, to the design of information-rich landscapes that promote search, discovery and adaptability in the solving of novel performance problems

💡 Simply, what is ‘acquired’ during skill acquisition is a deep and evolving relationship between a performer and the constraints of their environment  

💡 Rationalised through ecological dynamics, an intelligent performer is an adaptive, engaged and motivated individual who learns quickly and relies on perceptions, cognitions, emotions, and actions to function effectively in a specific environment 

💡 This also emphasises the role of the coach as one very much aligned to that of a designer—in that problems are progressively incorporated into the practice task without pre-defined solutions, encouraging players to deepen their knowledge of the performance environment and its emerging (and decaying) opportunities for action. 

💡 More directly, practice tasks should be embedded, with the performer placed in a representatively designed environment encouraging them to practice skills as strategies toward the achievement of a task goal .

💡 For example, an athlete could be encouraged to co-design a practice task that offers pleasantly frustrating problems to them and/or teammates to solve within a fish tanked environment. 

13 Principles of Video Game Design

Reference for Paper

Robertson, S., & Woods, C. T. (2021). “Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches can Learn from Video Game Designs. Sports Medicine-Open, 7(1), 1-8.