Archery coaches and the internet: Woodcock 2023

The thesis, a Master's by Research at Manchester Metropolitan University, looks at how Archery GB coaches use the internet to find information and to learn, during the years when the governing body moved most of its coach education online, with the pandemic speeding things up. The questionnaire drew 73 responses, 63 of them judged valid, out of 1,959 registered coaches; six coaches were then interviewed.

Of those who answered, 90.3% said they went online for their coaching before Covid and 78.6% during the lockdowns: a fall, against the author's expectations. About half said they used the information they found (51.9% before, 50.0% during) and nearly all the rest said they used it sometimes. Among the platforms ticked, the most frequent were the Archery GB website (13.99%), the governing body's Learning Curve platform and YouTube (12.63% each); during the pandemic webinars and the governing body's platform rose slightly, with no significant differences. In all, 61.7% rated online platforms at least moderately useful.

The interviews describe mainly a reference use: the internet as a store of things already learned, to be looked up when needed, and as a source of videos to show a movement to pupils. The interviewees said they preferred learning in person and from other coaches, felt swamped by the amount of material and were wary of some of what they found. The author concludes that, in the data collected, moving coach education online showed no benefit.

The design is mixed-methods. The questionnaire, adapted from an instrument built to study teachers' use of Twitter, was put online between February and April 2022, first in the governing body's coaching groups and on the Learning Curve platform, then on Facebook and Twitter, and finally through county coaching organisers. It asked the same questions for two periods, before and during the lockdowns: whether coaches used the internet, which platforms, how often, whether the information found its way into their work with archers and how useful it was. Responses are described with percentages and means; non-parametric tests (Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon) were planned for comparisons, but only one result, not significant, appears in the text.

The semi-structured interviews, held on Microsoft Teams, lasted 25 minutes on average (14 to 40) and involved six coaches from Level 1 to Level 3, two women and four men aged 30 to 65, all either known to the author or volunteers after the questionnaire. They were analysed thematically and organised within the realist evaluation framework, which tries to link a context, a mechanism and an outcome.

The sample selected itself and covers about 3% of registered coaches; nobody knows how many saw the questionnaire or how many of those registered were still coaching. Responses date from 2022 and asked people to recall two periods already past, so the before-and-during comparison depends on memory. The figures do not fully add up: there are 63 valid responses, but the table by sex counts 56 people and the table by qualification 53, and the means in the respondent profile table are hard to interpret. The platform percentages are shares of the choices made, not of respondents.

There are six interviews, with people close to the author, who is himself an Archery GB coach and coach developer: an insider's view, useful for understanding, but one that weighs on interpretation. Governing body staff, planned at the outset, were left out, partly because of an internal reorganisation and partly so that those who had moved coach education online would not be judging it. The thesis does not measure what coaches learn or whether their work with archers changes, and it has not been through a journal's peer review.

For an archer the finding is indirect: it is about the people who coach them. In Britain in early 2022, the coaches who responded used the internet often, but mostly to look up things they already knew or to show a video, and said they learned more by talking to other coaches and in person. The governing body's platforms were consulted, but were not seen as the place where coaches develop.

For those who run coach education, the thesis suggests that putting courses online does not by itself make them a learning tool, and that finding a way through too many sources of uneven quality is a concrete problem for a sport that relies largely on volunteers (two thirds of respondents were unpaid). These are pointers from a small, self-selected sample, to be read as an exploration rather than a measurement.