Technology-enhanced learning in sports education using clickers: Satisfaction, performance and immediacy

INTRODUCTIONAs part of Judo education and training, athletes are taught to act as coaches making prompt decisions on battle events, which requires a good understanding of the rules and regulations of the sport. Instructional content for this type of training is designed annually by the International Judo Federation (IJF) which determines the official position on manners, conduct and arbitration rules of the sport. This instructional content is based on a rich collection of authentic video-snapshots taken from the International Judo competition. Correct decisions on the event of each video-snapshot and explanations are also provided by IJF. In a seminar on the rules and regulations of the sport, athletes typically watch the video-snapshots and elaborate on what is right or wrong in the case of the demonstrated events. The seminar either involves a class-wide discussion of the video-snapshots and appropriate decision-making or it takes the form of a typical individual assessment of athletes' understanding of the rules and regulations (i.e., a knowledge test with multiple-choice type of possible decisions the Judo coach should have made in each case). In any case, it is desirable that the athletes respond quickly and accurately to the demonstrated events, replicating the fast pace in making judgments required by a coach during a Judo battle.In this study, the investigators (a Judo trainer and an educational technologist) sought to examine the potential value of using clickers to improve the effectiveness of Judo seminars on the rules and regulations of the sport. We would argue that, despite the richness of the IJF instructional content, the current practice of training fails to simulate the fast reaction time and decision making required during a Judo battle. Thus, we perceived clickers as a relevant technology to integrate into these seminars to simulate the fast paced nature of Judo coaching. Clickers are remote personal response systems, recorded in the literature with different names like Classroom Performance System (CRS), Clicker Assessment and Feedback (CAF) and Audience Response Systems (ARS). They consist of a small remote control, which is accompanied by a receiver connection as well as an application for the operation of the system and the recording of results. Their use in educational settings has been found to assist the interaction between learners and instructors, support understanding of the subject of the course, allow assessment of the leaners' stage of knowledge, and enable the feedback loop between learners and instructors (e.g., Boyle & Nicol, 2003; Ioannou & Artino, 2010; Premuroso, Tong, & Beed, 2011; Roush & Song, 2013). Furthermore, the study draws on the ideas of gamification as an educational method that sets the overall learning process as a game or competition. The term refers to the "use of game mechanics in non-gaming contexts" (Deterding et al., 2011) or "the phenomenon of creating gameful experiences" (Koivisto & Hamari, 2014). The challenge is to adapt game features in a learning environment, in this case an assessment setting, without squeezing out what is enjoyable about games (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002). There have been many attempts to implement gamification in many areas of education and training, to make learning more engaging (Ott & Tavella, 2010) and researchers have argued that gamification methods can affect learners' or trainees' motivation and interaction within a learning/training setting (Ejsing-Duun & Karoff, 2014). Also, results from tertiary education show significant correlation between the performance of students in gamified activities and their performance on a final examination (Mavridis et al., 2014). We therefore, expected that clickers could gamify Judo seminars giving the trainers the chance to praise the athletes, making the seminar more attractive and potently more effective.Overall, learning technology in sport education is not a topic we see researched very often; yet we suggest its potential to improve sports education and sport-related outcomes should not be undervalued. …