A toe on the ladder – Coaching Foundation

Published: September 21, 2022

Judy Bell and Suzanne were delighted to read this personal testament from a Karena of ESOC a recent learner on the Coaching Foundation course. The tutor team developed the online version of the course over lockdown and, needless to say, we are delighted with the positive reaction from Karena and many others.

Coaching Foundation

I have almost completed the orienteering coaching foundation course which has kindly been sponsored by the club. The course consists of three, hour and a half, evening sessions, delivered virtually, and a face-to-face practical session.

Through these sessions, you learn some really valuable lessons about how to engage learners, how to consider the level of expertise of your learners and how to pitch your coaching session to this level. The sessions are being delivered by Judith and Suzanne who are both expert in handling the virtual platform using documents shared in the chat and Google Jamboards to make the session interactive and fun.

Through participation in this course, you are also given access to a wonderful range of material for use in planning and delivering an orienteering coaching session. Many of you will have experienced Judith’s wonderful coaching sessions in person as ESOC club members. Judith let us into a secret through the course, that she had never had to prepare a lesson plan from scratch as the BOF lesson plans can be simply downloaded and adapted to your needs. You are also given access to these lesson plans by taking this course.

Vicente and Walter discussing the finer points – thanks to Walter for the photos

Suzanne, using some terrific graphics in her slides, will give you the basics of learning theory. I have just completed a postgraduate certificate in medical education from Dundee university, and I was amazed how Suzanne packaged and delivered the same central concepts so succinctly and clearly. Suzanne delivered over 8 hours the most important learning points which took 18 months to learn in the university course!

I thoroughly recommend this coaching foundation course. It is fun, enlightening and will give you valuable skills.

If you would also like to get your toe on the coach education ladder, there are now 3 more Coaching Foundation courses in the spring to sign up to on the courses page. Any queries can be directed to suzanne@scottish-orienteering.org