I like games…but it turns out I have misunderstood the video game approach to designing practice activities

Fascinating to hear more from Amy Price speaking on iCoachCricket about her video game approach (VGA) to designing practice activities.

Back in 2019 I tried to devise a couple of vga-inspired games, but, working way below the “high performance” level, I was looking for games-based activities that teach players how to play cricket, not how to play the games.

In truth, my games are really gamified drills, and lack the strategising amd meta-cognitive elements that are clearly central to Amy’s conception of VGA.

What follows are some initial thoughts on modifying Amy’s game (you will need to watch the series of videos on iCoachCricket) to support my notion of “purposeful” cricket practice, whilst introducing more of the “thinking about thinking” that is key to VGA.

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Conversational frameworks and coaching

I wrote previously about my introduction to learning types [1.] and how these educational activities can be mapped onto coaching activities.

Learning types are defined in Professor Diana Laurillard’s model of how students learn, the Conversational Framework (see, for example, Laurillard, D (2012), Teaching as a Design Science, Routledge), describing learning interactions between learner and teacher and between learner and peers.

The Conversational Framework — Laurillard

Whilst working through another online course (Blended & Online Learning Design, UCL, hosted by FutureLearn), I was struck by how closely the framework itself could be applied to learning in sports coaching & player development.

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Introducing swing; what is “coaching”?

Interesting re-post from @ImSporticus, just before Christmas.

It got me thinking about how I would coach someone to swing a cricket ball.

And the programme I came up with included a bit of direct instruction, a lot self-guided discovery, maybe some feedback, a demo & a drill to scaffold learning.

Rather more to it than “hold the ball like this, follow-through like this”.

This post started as a (lengthy) reply to the tweet from @ImSporticus. If you follow @theteesra, you might have seen all this already.

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