Introduction and guidance
This free badged course, Coaching others to coach, lasts 24 hours, with 8 ‘sessions’. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete a further study session. The eight sessions are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:
- What do coach developers do?
- How do coaches learn?
- How do you build effective learning relationships?
- Becoming self-aware of power in your role
- Developing your teaching repertoire and skills
- Asking good questions and listening actively
- Effective observations and feedback
- Refreshing coach development for the digital age.
The course is dedicated to developing the people who develop sport coaches. It is particularly intended to support people who are just beginning to support coaches or those who want to develop their expertise in the role further. You will cover topics that examine how coaches learn, why it is important to build effective relationships, how to ask good questions and listen actively, how your status can influence the process of learning, and the skill of observing and providing feedback to coaches. You will also discover how coaches describe the qualities of an effective coach developer and how you can learn to improve the support you provide to coaches. By the end of the course, you should be more confident in your ability to support coaches and guide them towards developing their coaching practice.
There will be numerous opportunities to check your learning. This includes interactive quizzes, of which Sessions 4 and 8 will provide you with an opportunity to earn a badge to demonstrate your new skills. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- understand the impact coach developers can have on coach learning and development
- appreciate the skills, knowledge and personal qualities that effective coach developers possess
- describe appropriate concepts and theories that explain the process of becoming a better coach
- reflect on and question personal current practices as a coach developer and how these practices can be improved
- consider how coach learning and development may evolve in the future and the implications this might have for coach developers.
Moving around the course
In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each session, you will find a link to the next session. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.
It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.
The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others