CommunicationPublished on 19 August 2024

Using innovative learning solutions to help elite athletes

The Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen (SFISM) Department of Sports Economics held a workshop entitled Athlete Education 4.0 in cooperation with ThinkSport. The event focused on innovative learning solutions tailored to the needs of elite athletes.

Wanted: creative learning solutions for elite athletes – picture: ThinkSport.

Workshop participants – which included representatives of various academic institutions and sports associations as well as former athletes – tackled the challenge of developing supportive learning solutions tailored to the unique needs of elite athletes during and after their sporting career. The event took place as part of the Innovation Booster – Sport and Physical Activity programme supported by Innosuisse. It brings together businesses and academic and sport organisations to develop new partnerships and projects with an open innovation culture.

Background

Elite athletes invest a considerable amount of time and effort into achieving excellence in their sport. This requires immense personal commitment and places significant demands on their time. Only 17% of the elite athletes in Switzerland have a total income of more than CHF 70,000, which is below the average salary in Switzerland, and 41% earn less than CHF 14,000 annually. This illustrates an important financial gap and calls for the acquisition of sources of revenue beyond the realm of sports.

An increasing number of sports organisations and academic institutions have initiated Career Assistance Programs career assistance programmes (CAP) or Dual Career Programsdual career programmes (DCP) to help elite athletes combine their sports career with a transition to their post-sports career through academic or non-academic education (e.g. IOC Athlete 365 Career+). The SFISM has offered a CAP for the elite sports recruits since 2021. Further development is planned in this area, using new tools to optimise the programme and ideally make it accessible to all athletes.

Challenge

Tailor-made learning solutions are necessary in order to meet the complex sport and non-sport specific needs of elite athletes and enable them to secure their career development and financial situation. Web 4.0 including smart tools/apps based on artificial intelligence (AI) can provide a new and fully unexploited spectrum of possibilities for personalised and decentralised education programmes.

Dual career: Workshop on the optimal combination of elite sport and education- Picture: ThinkSport.

Objective

The aim of the workshop was to develop ideas for an innovative education product that includes the possibility of mobile learning without time restrictions, and contains elements of Learning 4.0 such as learning nuggets, gamification, situational learning, self-organisation and knowledge sharing. The content will be made available to elite athletes in a situational, practical and individual way through an AI-based app/platform or similar means.

Next steps

The first workshop generated promising ideas that were further defined at a second event in Bern. The specific projects now in development are expected to launch at the beginning of 2025, with the aim of   effectively managing the challenges that inspired them.