Training Structure

Summary:

Current conversations about training.

Training Structure

Seth May 26 Aug 2008 18:57

Seth,
We probably need to start thinking again about training for officials. Do you have thoughts on how you think we should do it?

I need to go through my notes and dust off my brain to see what needed changing. I think we really need to hammer home ways for folks to be consistent in their enforcement of the rules and how they work a race.

Also, Terri told me they had a new FinishLynx camera. We probably need a refresher on that.

I'm considering getting my HAM radio license to use at races. With nobody to talk with at the race, it will be pointless. I wonder if this is something we might encourage other officials to do. It's rather expensive for the equipment, but could really help when we need to communicate and don't have cell coverage to the finish line.

With road races, we generally have cell coverage. With other events (stage races and ATB), we often do not have cell coverage. I gave a bunch of high quality law enforcement radios to Kenji over the weekend. They were donated to me to give to OBRA. I would not be surprised if we cannot get them working or licensed cost effectively. If we can, that's a perfect solution. If not, do we need to come up with something else? Just a thought.

Talk to you soon.
Fish

Re: Training Structure

Seth May 26 Aug 2008 18:58

Jim,
Thanks for the prompt. I have been thinking about this in my limited
spare time. One would think that having a degree in education might
help with with building trainings. Personally, I think that we need to
think about the whole training process, rather than the single event.
Lets identify the needs and the goals. Here are what they are from my
stand point (specifically, where things are needed in the southern
part of the
valley):

Needs:
1. Active officials who can work as assistant judges and assistant referees at road races, criteriums, time trials, and cyclo-cross races.
2. Experienced officials who are comfortable acting as chief referee and chief judges.

Goal: To have trained people who are competent and comfortable filling the responsibilities race officials in a variety of settings and actively participate as officials.

To break it down, there are several stages of knowledge and skill
acquisitions:
1. Acquisition
a. General knowledge required by all officials, regardless of discipline and role
b. Knowledge specific to the role (judge, referee)
c. Knowledge specific to the discipline (rr, crit, tt, cx, track)
2. Fluency
a. On course demonstrations
b. Small group situation based discussions
c. Individual demonstration of knowledge
3. Generalization
a. Real race experience
b. Learning how to implement what they know
4. Adaptation
a. Can apply knowledge in new situations
b. We would consider this person a competent official

With beginning officials, we run the risk of overloading them with too much information. I think we may have run this risk last year. It will be important for us to identify what the core information is. This will be the knowledge that every official, regardless of specialization, needs to know. Once this base is established, we can build on it with specializations. By this (1b, 1c) I mean role and discipline specific knowledge and skills.

We also need to identify what skills are practical to teach in a course and those that must be acquired in the field. Although I thought the finish line demonstration was interesting last year, I think it distracted from the focus of learning how to judge. That said, the "mock race" training was fabulous.

This is my first pass at looking at how to arrange the training. I think we learned a lot from this winter and can really move forward from the foundation that you laid down.

I would be willing to try and identify core knowledge and skills. We then need to decide what this training will be (roles/disciplines). That will dictate a lot of how we move forward.

Thanks
Seth

Re: Training Structure

Seth May 26 Aug 2008 18:59

I like what you've laid out below. Very evident that you have way more training in…well…training…than I do. ;-) I also agree that last winter was certainly like drinking from a firehose. Very fast and lots of content. Having the experienced officials there was more of a detriment…too many varying opinions all starting with "Well, it depends…".

I don't think "It depends" is as widely applicable as the current crop of experienced officials seem to like to use it. I think situations can be categorized and responses can be generalized onto a cue card/decision matrix crib sheet. This is commonly done for the EMS profession. Heather has a wad of hard plastic cards and tiny pre-printed notebooks…quick reference guides, if you will…that help medics in the field make the right decision in a consistent fashion.

We could easily develop the same sort of guide, and it would REALLY help officials know how to make the call regarding things like centerlines, littering, unsafe and unsportsmanlike conduct, etc. Knowing what to do the first second or third (if applicable) violation, how to penalize according to venue (time penalty at a stage race vs DQ at a road race, etc)…these are very important for consistency. This information could be published ahead of time so the racers know the penalties.

A perfect example, as much as I hate to admit it, is football.

So, I agree we need to lay down how to do the training, but a second approach can be to document the "answers" where possible and assemble them in a quick reference guide.

I have the Cherry Pie coming up in Feb. I will be handing off key pieces to my team so they can do the heavy lifting for a change. It should free me up to work on this. Also, I would like to train a bunch and do some serious riding, so I'd like to formulate a schedule and plan out when we will get together and milestones for what we need to get done and by when.

I have teleconferencing services at HP I can poach, especially during the week. If you have a computer, we can work together on this once per week or something regular like that. A working meeting isn't too bad online.

I'm also working on a promoter's guide for the Cherry Pie so I can hand off pieces of the race promotion. I'm closely referencing a general promoter guide from the Colorado organization. I was hoping to turn the CO version into an OBRA version at some point…another project. That should be fairly quick, though, since the CO version is very complete.

Anyway, let me know how and when you'd like to get started.

Fish

Re: Training Structure

Seth May 26 Aug 2008 19:00

Jim,
Thanks for your comments. I like your idea of decision matrix crib sheets. These are some tools that would be welcome independent of the training. I'm not quite sure I know what you have in mind. An example would be helpful.

We could proceed by modularizing the training. This would allow us to build modules as they are needed. The modules would be organized around domains of knowledge. Here is a first breakdown of possible modules. I'm not sure I like this breakdown yet, but it's a start.
1. Core
2. Judging
a. Road Events (rr, tt, crits)
b. Stage Race Events
3. Refereeing
a. Road Races
b. Time Trials
c. Criteriums
5. Cyclocross
6. Track
7. Mountain Bike

I would like to recommend that we conduct the next training close to when the races are. This will give officials an opportunity to put their new skills to use soon after they have attended the training. This will help build confidence and help build and retain officials. That said, it might not be the best timing for us, so we'll need to compromise.

Jim, I also have access to video conferencing tech, so I think we can work some "face-to-face" meetings. It seems like the two of us are the two big pushers on documentation and training. It would be nice to have a place to track and develop work. I keep thinking that an OBRA wiki would be very useful, but convincing the powers that be might be problematic. Our priorities don't seem to be the same as a lot of other folks. Cheryl hasn't even built my officials section of the website yet, something that I asked for 3 or 4 months ago. (I sent her pre-build pages). At least they created the officials mailing list when we asked for it.

I might look at putting up some project tracking / wiki software up on my web server.

Let's work at putting together a time-line and deliverables list. That will really help our-line what our goals are.

Thanks
Seth

Re: Training Structure

Seth May 26 Aug 2008 19:00

We need to add the other disciplines under Judging and Refereeing, too.

We may have an "expanded" piece which is specific to each discipline exclusive of the other disciplines. These are things that make working each discipline different from the others, where "core" addresses everything that is common to all disciplines.

I'd like to teach the "core" module to everyone, then separate into "judging" and "refereeing" for a bit. Then, we get together and run the field simulation work. If at all possible, we could then re-convene, swap groups, and let everyone get exposed to the other category (judge/referee) that they didn't do in the AM session. Or something like that. You get the idea.

If needed, we could also do training for CCX nearer to the CCX season. Lap counting for the CCX races along with the differences between CCX and crits/circuit races make it a good candidate for this sort of specialization. This also applies to Track. It would be best, IMHO, to have training at certain events throughout the year.

Example: Do CCX training at one of the first big CCX races in the dry weather. ATB training could be at Slinger and Road could be at Cherry Pie.

Too many ways to slice it! ;-)

Fish