Sports studies e.g. physiology / coaching

acoggan

Boy, a bit more enthusiasm here for this idea than I expected! Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone.

Since I have y'alls attention, perhaps I can get you to serve as an unpaid "focus group" for me. In no particular order, here's what I've been considering/questions that I have:

1) How much time are people willing to commit? To make such an online course a true value, I figure that it would need to move beyond just the half-day of lectures on exercise physiology that is part of USA Cycling's level 2 coaching certification. OTOH, I don't think it would be possible to go into tremendous detail, as A) not everyone signing up for such a course necessarily has the background that would be expected of an undergraduate exercise science student, and B) only so much detail is really useful to a coach (versus interesting). Just off the top of my head, then, I was considering 1.5 h/wk for 10 wk, or perhaps 2 h/wk for 6 wk. As potential student/clients, does that make sense/appeal to you?

2) What time of year would be best? Assuming that most of those signing up would be from the US (which may not be a valid assumption), I'm thinking that summer in the northern hemisphere would be too busy a time for most people. OTOH, I can also see people have problem committing so much time to such a course over the winter, what with holidays and all. So, I'm leaning towards the fall (obviously not this year) and/or spring - what say you?

3) What about tests and grading? Although I joked about calling myself an institute, I don't envision this ever growing to the level of any kind of certification or diploma program (although if somebody wants to take that business model and run with it to form a university for cycling coaches, I could see being a part of that). IOW, those signing up for the course would be doing so almost entirely for the knowledge they would gain, and not in hopes that it would open other doors re. their coaching career. If that assumption is correct, then I don't see a lot of need for tests to make sure that people are truly grasping the material...basically you'd be on your own there. OTOH, I do think that knowing you're going to have to pass an exam at some point is often motivational. My initial thought is therefore to just have an exit exam that is graded pass/fail, but with a standard for passing that is sufficiently high that I'd be comfortable with someone presenting themselves as having passed my course. Thoughts?

4) How much to charge? This is the toughie, and I'm still mulling over what is a reasonable fee. Obviously, though, the more people who sign up the less it would have to be per person to make it worthwhile. I would therefore likely establish some minimum number of individuals who would have to sign up by a particular date for the course to "make", and refund any and all up-front fees to those who pay in advance if it didn't. I'd also likely offer a discount to coaching groups, as that would A) help them, and B) remove some of the incentive to have only one person sign up but then have a bunch of other people also gather around their computer screen.

5) Let's see, what else? I'd make the syllabus available for free a priori, and would probably recommend (but not require) a particular textbook. I don't know whether lectures would be downloadable...on the one hand, it would be great as a student to be able to review material, but on the other, there is no way of preventing the file being shared with those who did not pay for the course. You could argue that what you get for your money is the ability to interact directly with the instructor, but that is diminished in an online course vs. in person, so I'm not sure whether that adds sufficent additional value to discourage piracy. Maybe make the .ppt slides freely available, but not the audio? I don't know...