Diverse Learning Opportunities for Fair Disabled Sport
The German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) is the largest public-welfare-oriented association for athletes with disabilities in Germany. It consists of seventeen state associations and two professional associations and represents the interests of approximately 600,000 members. It is also the umbrella organization for competitive, recreational, preventive and rehabilitation sports for people with disabilities. In addition, the DBS is the National Paralympic Committee for Germany. A major goal of the association is to integrate the sport of people with disabilities into society on an equal footing.
To inspire people with disabilities to take up sport, they are provided with a diverse and comprehensive range of activities. This includes, among other things, a high-quality rehabilitation sports program. The association is also very active at the international level, as the DBS has made it its goal to strengthen the international competitiveness of top Paralympic sport.
Particular emphasis is placed on high-quality training and continuing education for exercise instructors, trainers and medical personnel in disabled sport. The focus here is on ensuring the health and medical care of athletes. Continuous development of personnel is necessary to achieve the goals mentioned above. In addition to in-person education and training, digital learning opportunities are already in use, where participants have access to manuscripts, lists of links and literature, and relevant information.
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No Continuity in Existing Learning Measures
Due to the growing need for continuing education in para sport, the DBS wanted to further develop its digital learning offering and make it more continuous. The main focus here is on teaching subjects such as classification in para sport and the further training of medical staff – for example, on the use of examination forms to determine the sports fitness of athletes and the corresponding diagnoses, problems and injuries. To this end, the DBS asked itself how a more sustainable transfer of learning could be ensured and how the continuous expansion of content could be made possible. A complex issue that presented many challenges for the use of traditional web-based training and its platforms. This is because traditional further-education training is often designed as a one-off learning measure and is considered complete after a final test. This approach leads to many topics being forgotten and, accordingly, not being internalized. Especially in the medical field, a continuous learning process should take place in order to inform people about new findings, regulations and specifications and to enable fair as well as healthy sport.
In addition, there is a need for more flexible use of the offering, which is neither time- nor location-dependent and gives learners mobile, flexible access to the DBS's learning offers whenever they have time. At the same time, evaluation options cannot be missing, as they help the DBS ensure the relevance of the learning content and understand which topics the target groups find difficult – for example, in order to design further learning measures or optimize existing ones.
The DBS Academy in chunkx Solving the Learning Challenges
With chunkx, the DBS now offers a comprehensive DBS Academy that provides an adaptive, sustainable and continuous learning experience for para sport. Across three different learning channels, users learn more about classification, appropriate medical and health care, and the sports-medicine screening of athletes in para sport. In this way, knowledge about possible diagnoses, problems and injuries can be firmly established among medical personnel, and the examination forms can be evaluated even better.
With the DBS Academy in chunkx, we are achieving our goal of conducting even higher-quality examinations in para sport.
Dr. Charlotte Kreutz Project Coordinator, Sports Medicine and Classification
Sustainable Learning Transfer for All Target Groups
By preparing the content in microlearning units, learners now have the opportunity to easily and continuously review and reinforce the course content in chunkx. Our intelligent algorithm selects learning content according to user behavior, learns from it, and connects topics that are individually relevant for everyone. The algorithm not only repeats tasks answered incorrectly, but also queries correctly answered tasks again on a user-specific basis to ensure the sustainable transfer of learning. This allows physicians, sports scientists and nursing staff to interrupt their learning sessions whenever they want and resume them later. In addition, with the help of our AI-based content creation, changes to regulations or legal requirements can be created automatically and shared with the target audience in the form of supplementary microlearning units. Further developments of the channels, as well as recommendations of topic-related articles and studies, are displayed to the learner in their newsfeed.
Gamified incentives such as small awards – called "chunks" – and ranking lists, in addition to stored learning objectives, provide incentives to start a learning unit regularly and discover new DBS Academy content.
Full Flexibility for Maximum Learning Impact
Learners can easily access the microlearning units on their smartphone, tablet or computer, regardless of location and time. For example, DBS medical staff can quickly refresh their knowledge just before an examination. It is also possible to search for specific keywords in the content. As a result, doctors can review knowledge shortly before an examination and concentrate fully on examining the Paralympic athletes. To increase motivation and the incentive to work diligently on the microlearning units, the DBS also offers a certificate for its academy.
Detailed and Efficient Learning Analysis
With chunkx, the DBS has the ability to easily view and evaluate learner results. Unlike traditional e-learning systems, chunkx analyzes the completed learning units of all athletes by filtering key figures such as success and dropout rates or average repetitions by topic tag (e.g. #SMU). In doing so, the DBS gains insights into possible difficulties of the users and can better design the necessary follow-up learning measures to close potential knowledge gaps.
Rethinking Mandatory Training – in Companies Too
The DBS project clearly demonstrates how learning can be redefined and one-off measures transformed into continuous learning experiences. A change that is also relevant to many topics in the corporate context. Because here, too, mandatory training and continuing education seminars on topics such as compliance, occupational safety and ethics are held regularly – into which many scarce resources and high investments flow. Unfortunately, often without the hoped-for effect! The learning content is forgotten immediately after the training is completed and does not help companies achieve their sales or project goals.
Adaptivity, continuity and AI-assisted content creation are needed to future-proof workforce development. The topic of learning must be rethought: for example, learning goals should be set quarterly instead of annually, and individual learning paths should be designed from structured introductory content to adaptive follow-up content for employees. In addition, new communication approaches are needed that allow existing learning content to be supplemented with regular postings on current developments.
We offer all this and much more to companies on their way to continuous and adaptive learning. In this way, not only do the companies themselves benefit – by saving resources on content creation and ensuring the sustainable anchoring of topics – but so do the employees, who can learn flexibly and continuously.
