Competence 3: Collaborating in teams and networks
Sports Professionals establish relationships, collaborations and/or coalitions and explore the boundaries of their own profession in order to pursue common goals efficiently, thus creating value. They position and establish themselves within these professional networks.
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In my second year the Hanzehogeschool of sport studies organised an international Sport, Physical Education and Coaching in Health(SPEACH) week for students from the health and sports division out of eight European countries. This week would be the final piloting phase of the SPEACH project to test if the given Health Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA) courses and lectures were according the wishes and needs of the professional field. The SPEACH week was an idea of Johan de Jong, who is a lecturer at the Hanzehogeschool of sport studies, the organisation existed of lecturers of the Hanzehogeschool for sport studies and students from both the ALO and SHM.
Ans Kremer asked if I would be interested to help in the organisation of the week which was a great opportunity for me to gain experience in organising such events and working in a larger setting, so I took part in the student team of the organisation which existed of six other students. Besides being part of the organisation I also participated in one of the modules of the week: creating a family based environment to push society in a healthier direction.
During the week theoretical courses were given by an international team of lecturers so all specific fields of expertise were covered. All the information was used come up with creative solutions to enhance family based physical activity in a specific area in the Netherlands. This work was done in teams of four, my team existed of all Dutch students.
As mentioned before I took part in the organisation of the week as well in one of the modules. My task during the organisation was administration together with Romina Feuser and later on creating a Facebook community. During the week I had the task of guiding the foreign students around Groningen. As a participant I followed the classes during the week and completed the assignment and presenting the result together with the other team members.
To get a good start with the organising part of the SPEACH week several meetings were held to divide tasks, communicate progress as well as problems. Together with Romina Feuser administration of personal details of the students was taken care of. This by answering emails to check if they were really participating, retrieving their details and putting their details down in an excel sheet. Later on I created a Facebook community were all important information of the week, like time tables and locations, was shared. The Facebook page had to have the same lay out as the material spread for the SPEACH week, so I used pictures of the website and fitted them to Facebook. I also created the text content for the Facebook page all necessary information was clearly communicated to all the participants.
As participant I worked together with three others. We started by communicating the tasks and searched for information together. I collected all the input from my team members and put them together in one document. At the final day of the week our team presented our result to the rest of the group.
The result was a successful SPEACH week on both parts for me. Students and lecturers were all pleased about the organisation and the communication during the week. We evaluated the week in a final meeting were we all concluded to be content about how the week went by.
As participant I finished the week with a final presentation at which the international lecturers gave positive feedback on the creativity of the content and the way of presenting.
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The SPEACH week is good burden of proof for collaborating in teams and networks and reaching level B because of the size of the event and the different team settings I had to switch between during the week.
As a participant I was pleased with how we managed to come up with the idea we had to change physical activity on a family level and communicated this to the lecturers and other students.
As being part of the organisation I would change the approach of organizing. This because we organised some side events that didn’t get much response. This time could be used more efficient by focusing more on the bigger parts. This taught me also that not everything goes always as planned and there is not much you can do about it.
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In the fourth year, I took part in two networks, being the one at my internship MIBOSO and in the Community of Practice at the Hanzehogeschool. The situation at MIBOSO involves working not only with the team of MIBOSO existing of Kelly Schat, Kim Hakkenes, Auke van Dijken, and Sam Flik. There are also three external self-employed parties that make use of the facilities MIBOSO must over. These are Wendy Hoek from PT out of the box, Mike Hindriks from MH Personal Training and Kamiel Piek from Peak fysiotherapie.
Since clients belong to different parties not everyone visiting MIBOSO is directly connected to the sports studio. Naturally, it’s still expected to host clients of all parties involved in a respectful and professional manner. This includes welcoming clients, asking for the which of the parties’ clients need a service from then assuring if the party in question is present, offering drinks to clients that are waiting for their services. I see this as important for MIBOSO because of the word of mouth that everyone that visits will have. The deliver a consistent quality of service towards every visitor a beneficial image of MIBOSO will be created towards the outside world. This is seen from my point of view, to see if co-workers and third parties were thinking the same about my professional performance and attitude, I made them perform a 360-degree feedback of which an overview is shown below.
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Besides the internship network I took part in the CoP which consisted of the following members, besides myself:
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Annick Grootenhuis
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Nick Beumer
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Raymond Mobach
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Remco Jonkman
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Saagár Mahalingam
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Sander Kuperus
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Shaïna Boer
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Yfke Hoek
During the first weeks I was more focussed on finalizing my final project plan than on creating and expanding knowledge between the members of our Community of Practice. I didn’t saw any other added value at the time. Because the final project plan needed approval before i could really start with my graduation project this was my focus. So, in the first couple of meetings my interest went out to the approach other Community of Practice members had in their final project plan and how I could use parts of their approach in my own final project plan. I was also more focussed on discussing topics that were related towards the internships of other members of the Community of Practice. Despite these discussions were helping me in gaining knowledge on several topics that I could transfer to my own internship, a solid foundation for our Community of Practice was still non-existing.
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I should have been more pro-active in clarifying the actual expectations of the Community of Practice and setting up various channels of communication and knowledge sharing platforms during this phase. Which would not have only resulted in giving myself a head start for the rest of the year but also for the rest of the members. This was also noticed by a fellow Community of Practice member in the first round of peer assessments in February 2019.
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As a start we discussed the content and goals of our Community of Practice with each other. After consent of every member this agreement was sent out to the supervisors. What I believe is the most important point of agreement is helping each other’s competences to expand the next level throughout active participation and knowledge sharing.
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In the following weeks several brainstorm and creative sessions were used in order to come with a product. In our case this would be workshops during the intensive weeks of first years students from Sportkunde. With this goal in mind the CoP was divided into three groups that would each perform a workshop on a given topic. My group consisted of Remco Jonkman, Sander Kuperus and I. We dove into the basics of behavioural change by tackling the topics of conscious and subconscious influences, priming and nudging. With an eye on the point of view from the students we didn’t only share theoretical knowledge but made them put this knowledge into practice by coming up with innovative ideas for current problems. Each of us did research on the different topics since it was also overlapping with our graduation projects, this to make sure each of us knew what the workshop was all about.
The results were two contiguous workshops that were given to the first year students. The contents existed of roughly 25 minutes of theoretical information, 15 minutes of practical implementation by the first year students and 20 minutes of opening, evaluating and closing the workshops. Between the three of us the deviation and execution of tasks went smoothly and according to plan because we managed to stay within the given time of an hour, twice. Key example of reaching level C I would say.
Looking back on the evaluations and the participation of the first year students of the workshops, we did well. They were even that popular that we had extra participants during one of the workshops.
In the future I would like to move through the brainstorm phases more quickly to get to a more complete workshop. Because when taking more time to give deeper information about certain topics the students would had an even better step ahead through different courses of the Sportkunde program.
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