Activity design considerations for player learning and scanning

Players make decisions based on game problems

Soccer is a complex, dynamic and unpredictable sport, that requires players to have to search for information by scanning the environment, to discover their own solutions. Therefore, an important consideration for coaches is how they can design training activities that provide players with choices and decisions to make, based on less predictability and more variability. Coaches should recognize their role as that of a learning designer, who can design game problems and ask questions, which promote players to explore different solutions whilst simultaneously promoting players’ autonomy and self-regulation.

Philosophy on Activity Design

U.S. Soccer’s philosophy on player development is based on four-core tenets in a player-centered approach (eg. Reality- Based, Holistic, Experiential and Autonomy Support) which guides how coaches can ensure that they can design decision rich environments that prepare players for the future game. The starting point is recognizing the role perception, decision making, and execution play in how players must first search for information, to perform a player action.

Reality Based - Use the game as the starting point to develop the player's perception, decision making and execution

Holistic – Consider the person and player, inquire about, and acknowledge their needs

Experiential – Learning starts from the player's experience, design different experiences which tap into their perception

Autonomy Support – Empower the player to take ownership, offering them choices and opportunities to make decisions

Activity Designs Influence Coaching Interactions

We know that different activity designs influence coaches’ interactions and how they provide players with feedback. Coaches who design less game-like activities or drills, tend to use more prescriptive, instructional approaches that remove the players ability to rely on what they’ve seen or had to search for within the game, instead focusing heavily on ideal techniques to be mastered. This approach can disrupt our ability to provide players with autonomy support and a reality- based, holistic,and experiential learning environments. When compared to coaches who design more game-like (reality- based) activitiesthat promote player-autonomy and problem solving, we see an increase in players scanning and discovering different choices & solutions through unpredictability. The more unpredictable and varied the activity design is, the more coaches tend to use feedback that consists of more guided questions and challenges, that tap into the player’s experience andperception.

Coaching interactions relating to player-actions cannot be over-simplified into a set of step-by-step rules or script to follow, to achieve a desired outcome, as they don’t consider the complex and dynamic nature of the sport.

Strategies for how coaches can design activities to provide more effective learning can be found by reading our article on effective learning.

By viewing activity design and learning as ‘search’, coaches can instead focus their attention on how they can guide the player’s ability to scan/search for information to discover their own solutions. By designing better, self-regulatingactivities which provide variability and randomness, we will see more autonomy and learning take place.