In sports, the margin between winning and losing is very narrow.
A team must execute a winning strategy in a matter of seconds and players must make real-time decisions that determine the outcome of a game. Coaches develop these strategies and abilities in their teams through carefully analyzing past performance in training and competition.
Many simulation practitioners are beginning to use similar models of performance analysis in an effort to improve outcomes.
In sports players’ physical skills have been perfected over thousands of hours of practice and game time. What separates winning and losing teams are not only physical skills and athleticism, but cognitive and communication skills executed under intense pressure.
The best coaches are the ones who prepare their teams to analyze and assess relevant game factors, make the correct decision at the right time, and execute. They make certain their players explicitly understand expected performance measures. Players must communicate effectively, accept and perform assigned roles, working as a team toward the desired outcome.
In order to minimize errors, a coach will spend hours analyzing the performance of their own team. They may, for example, look for breakdowns in communication and execution, searching for ways to eliminate them.
Over the last 50 years, coaches have relied on advances in technology to improve performance analysis. During the last 10 years, SportsCode, developed by Sportstec, has been embraced at the highest levels of sport. This and similar technologies enable coaches to annotate or “code” their observations into game footage for the purposes of analyzing performance, determining opponents’ tendencies, and generating video evidence of best practices.
Globally, many practitioners of simulation have embraced a similar analysis model. Educators in the health care and marine training sectors are beginning to use similar technologies (for example Studiocode) for exactly the same reasons as coaches – to identify and reduce risks and to improve educational processes. The key analysis is the same the environments differ.
Healthcare professionals as well as off shore workers face more varied and serious situations than do sports coaches, despite what the fans may argue. The goal of simulation is to minimize risk to safety by improving team and individual skills.
The simulation educator is the Head Coach.
Coaches minimize risk to give their teams the best chance to win. The goals of simulation practitioners are similar to those of sports coaches; immerse learners in critical scenarios, provide several variables that are possible to occur and train the team to respond correctly.
Simon Reynolds
After reading Simon’s position, I came away with one reflection and one suggestion, or better yet, one call for action. I really appreciate Simon making parallels between a coach and a simulation educator. By definition coaching is a training or development process via which an individual (in our case the learner or trainee) is supported while achieving a specific personal or professional competence goal. In the era of competency-based education this model seems very appropriate. That was the reflection.
ReplyDeleteThe call for action is to conduct research to land empirical evidence in support (or not) of these ideas. Simon provides us with an industry derived, and empirically testable statement, which according to some views reside in the Pasteur’s quadrant “a class of scientific research methods that both seem fundamental understanding of scientific problems, and, at the same time, seek to be beneficial to the society” (Donald E. Stokes, 1997). Video based feedback and debriefing is currently an under researched area of simulation.