Teaching in the time of COVID

This essay arose as a response to teaching the final post-graduate course in the taught master's programme of the Faculty of Education at Brock University (St. Catharine’s Ontario Canada) in the spring and autumn of 2020, just after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the complete closures of schools and universities. Three students wrote about their relationships with teaching in the time of COVID. An experienced middle-school teacher discusses how the transition to suddenly homeschooling her five-year-old focused her attention on distinctions between curriculum-driven education and maternal teaching. A newly graduated teacher, concerned about the complete cancellation of extra-curricular sport programmes researches their histories. She discovers the ways in which intercollegiate sport, especially in the United States, transformed what had been healthy competition between undergraduate teams of students into multi-million-dollar businesses driving university revenue streams, eclipsing academic life and exploiting student athletes. In the United States, with academic institutions limiting or prohibiting in-person instruction in 2020-201, basketball and football teams competed. COVID spiked and people died. A nurse-educator, faced with the sudden requirement to remove of all nursing students from their required clinical placements at the onset of the pandemic writes about recalibrating the relationships between virtual experience (including simulations) and practical experience in nursing instruction. Given the vulnerability of clinical placements to sudden closures (SARS in 2003 had been a warning), the nurse-educator explains why it is time to determine which programme components could best be moved online. The contributions by the three students are framed by the professor's own adaptation to an online environment, including her development of asynchronous iMovie instruction combined with short synchronous seminars (with no more than five students at a time) and one-on-one tutorials.

The Emergence, Experiences, and Empowerment of Women Administrators, Coaches, and Athletes

The objective of this chapter is to provide a more thorough understanding of the current United States intercollegiate athletics model that includes competitive sport opportunities within its system of higher education, the history and emergence of women in sport within higher education, the experiences of women leaders within intercollegiate sport, and future women sport participant and leader empowerment initiatives within higher education. While women were provided opportunities to compete in sport competitively within higher education at a much later date than their men counterparts, the significant impact of athletic participation for women and girls at this level has been established within the previous research. Most notably, women and girls with past sport participation experience at the college level have been found to represent a high proportion of women in leadership roles across a variety of industry segments. These insights provide significant evidence of the importance of equitable access to sport participation within the higher education model.

The Transition Out of Sport: A Case of College Athletics and Academic Support Services

As the commercialization of intercollegiate sport continues to grow, it is critical to understand how transitioning away from college athletics may impact student-athletes. Sport administrators, coaches, academic support personnel, and players should be aware of how athletic identity, unpreparedness, and a lack of social connection can drastically impact student-athletes postsport. Understanding the adjustment issues associated with transition away from sport is crucial in developing policies and support services to effectively help struggling student-athletes. Sport management students are particularly important in the transition because they will be at the forefront of programming efforts. In addition, sport management students need to be exposed to the issue of athlete identity and adjustment in order to act in the best interests of student-athletes. The discussion questions provide an opportunity for sport management students to critically evaluate these issues from a multitude of perspectives.

Understanding the Meaning of Representation in a Deliberative Democratic Governance System

The meaning and nature of athlete representation in sport governance is broad and goes beyond formalistic delegate models and voting rights accounts. This article explores the meaning and nature of representation in the context of intercollegiate sport governance. Interviews were conducted with intercollegiate athlete representatives and athlete representative administrative advisors to gain an understanding of how and why athlete representatives carried out their roles. Findings revealed that the meaning and motivations of athlete representation were based on the institutionalized deliberative democratic governance system. Representation meant standing and acting for the power of the athlete voice and having the capacity to generate the athlete voice into legislation and decision making. The performative role of representatives involved self-accountability, where they accepted responsibility to engage in a deliberative process of collective decision making. Implications for practice and future research on athlete representation in a deliberative democratic sport governance system are presented.

Media Convergence as Exogenous Forces in a NCAA DI Athletic Department: Organizational Climate and Resource Allocation Decision Making

To successfully evolve, organizations should change at the same pace as the environment changes. It is particularly important when adapting and utilizing new media technology is a huge part of an organization’s success. Presently, media professionals in all industries including intercollegiate athletics are experiencing a significant change in their work environment due to the ever-changing nature of new media technology. In particular, media convergence, an integration of production by combining both old (e.g., television) and new media (e.g., the Internet), has been one of the most influential phenomena creating unexpected changes and complex dynamics in the current media industry. Nonetheless, what have been previously overlooked in sport communication literature are challenges generated by media convergence, which affects the nature of sport communication. This case study provides a scenario based on semi-fictitious information so that students can critically examine the dynamic nature as well as the effect of media convergence facing sport communication in intercollegiate sport. Further, the students are provided with an opportunity to practice decision-making skills to address the challenges stemming from media convergence. By doing so, discussion regarding media convergence in the context of intercollegiate sport could be better presented to relevant classroom discussion.

The Emergence, Experiences, and Empowerment of Women Administrators, Coaches, and Athletes

The objective of this chapter is to provide a more thorough understanding of the current United States intercollegiate athletics model that includes competitive sport opportunities within its system of higher education, the history and emergence of women in sport within higher education, the experiences of women leaders within intercollegiate sport, and future women sport participant and leader empowerment initiatives within higher education. While women were provided opportunities to compete in sport competitively within higher education at a much later date than their men counterparts, the significant impact of athletic participation for women and girls at this level has been established within the previous research. Most notably, women and girls with past sport participation experience at the college level have been found to represent a high proportion of women in leadership roles across a variety of industry segments. These insights provide significant evidence of the importance of equitable access to sport participation within the higher education model.