THE APPLICATION OF E-LEARNING IN A COLLEGIATE SPORTS CLASS TO DEVELOP THE “DIAGNOSIS SKILLS” IN TENNIS

Information communication technologies, especially video technologies, are associated with sports today. The main advantages of those technologies are objectivity and accuracy of information, visualization power, image comparison and blending features and the feedback expected to enhance motor performance (Liebermann and Franks, 2008).
The authors provided the practical tennis class with movie instructions on the web in National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya (NIFS). The aim of this class was to develop the “diagnosis skills” in sports. The purpose of this study was to present the details of this class and to clarify the effectiveness for developing the “diagnosis skills”.
We provide the students’ own movies through the e-learning system and they could observe their movies on the web. Those movies contained each student’s techniques of tennis and the game by each other students. Teaching assistant of this class edited those movies. It took almost two days to edit the movies to each student’s scene and upload to e-learning system. Those movies were tagged to each student. Thereby, it was quite easy to access the student’s own movies on e-learning system. The movies were recorded at the beginning, the middle and the end of semester. Students could compare the change of their techniques with those movies.
The papers from the students in each semester was analyzed and evaluated by the authors. The theme of the papers was to diagnose their own techniques and tactics from their own movies. Students described their impressions about this class in the papers as follows: “I definitely felt that I needed to master correct movement to hit good strokes”, “Experienced players showed accurate movement in each stroke”. The sports class with movie instructions and the papers to describe students’ own techniques and tactics had some effects to develop the diagnosis skills for students in tennis. The importance to describe the movement was insisted that the fist step to understand the movement rationally was to describe the movement by morphology (Meinel, 1981). It was quite important not only observing their own movies but also describing their own movement or their own techniques.
It was also suggested that the feedback for their viewpoints in the observations might lead to develop the “diagnosis skills” more effectively. Liebermann and Franks (2004) suggested this point of view as follows: Individuals sometimes cannot regulate the video feedback they receive. And the information might exceed the athletes’ processing ability. Therefore, the intervention of a coach is required particularly with inexperienced or young athletes.
Most of the students in this class were inexperienced in tennis at the beginning or semester. For those students, it might be effective to suggest and feedback the point of view from professor in each technique or in the match.