Sharing Good Practice in Coaching: The Social Network
Prepared for sports coach UK by Chloe Brown Social Media in Sport
Sharing Good Practice – The Social Network
Sharing good practice is essential to develop better coaches and therefore better athletes. Sharing good practice has previously been done during coaching courses or when coaches have the opportunity to network, however the rise of the internet has given way to new channels of communication and therefore the ability to share good practice in a new way. Social network sites have worked well to connect people and they are able to share good practice informally, however this report will look at how two of the biggest social networks can be used to share good practice and how a wiki can be used to share good practice amongst sports coaches. The same question was asked on all 3 social media platforms “how do you use technology in your coaching?” The number of interactions with the social media platform and the number of technology use methods suggested were recorded after 4 days from posting. 10% of respondents were then asked their views on their platform’s use for sharing best practice. Results
Social Media Platform
Interactions (% of overall respondents)
Number of methods suggested
Feedback from respondents summary
80
7
It is easy and quick to talk but you can’t include much detail. It is easier to connect with other coaches on a personal level to talk to them.
10
3
Facebook is used mainly for friends and following brands they like, professional discussion does not normally take place.
Social Media Platform
Interactions (% of overall respondents)
Wiki
10
Number of methods suggested
10
Feedback from respondents summary
An easy way to share information that can be referred back to and it is easy to go into more detail. The discussion boards on there would be useful if more people used them. The problem is having to go to a new website to do this.
Discussion The best method of sharing good practice amongst coaches appears to be twitter as this gained by far the highest number of responses with 80%. Despite this there still appears to be gaps in its usefulness as the feedback from the respondents showed twitter cannot be used in much detail and is not easy to access the conversation again or access other people’s discussions. Using a wiki seemed to prevent all these problems as it was able to store much more information in one discussion however it did mean that people had to access another website. All methods seemed to have their positives and their negative points, for shorter discussions twitter appeared to be the best as many more people were involved however for more in depth information a wiki would be useful to allow previous information that has been shared to be viewed easily. Both methods should be adopted by sports coaches to learn and share the most information about coaching that they can.
Appendix 1: Methodology
Three different social media platforms were used to collect the data. Twitter, Facebook and a wiki were used, the Sports Coach UK social media accounts were utilised so that existing followers could be recruited for Facebook and Twitter feedback with new members recruited for a wiki page. The same question was asked on all 3 platforms, “How do you use technology in your coaching?� The number of interactions with the question was collected at first. These interactions included replies and reposts or retweets. Users were given 4 days to interact with the questions. 10% of the number of respondents were then contacted and asked if they believe that their social media platform is useful in sharing best practice for sports coaches and why using a questionnaire. The information was then collated into a table as shown in the report and used to compare the most successful way of sharing good practice between sports coaches.