Recent research by Dr Geoffery Z. Kohe (SSES) and colleague Dr Nick Wise (Arizona State University) published in a special issue of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education has provides critical reflection on enhancing teaching practice at the intersections of Sport Management and sports geography.
Sport Management has become one of the fastest growing tertiary subject areas, especially in the UK, and has developed into a range of multi-faceted degree programmes that draw on a wide variety of disciplines and sub-disciplines. As Dr Kohe and colleague note, one the these, sport geography and the use of innovative digital technologies, provides a particularly unique area in which to introduce student to key sport spaces and sector issues and tensions, and develop professional competencies and digital literacy skills that may aid future employability. Drawing on a series of pedagogical case studies employed within the classroom teaching, seminars and assessment tasks, Dr Kohe’s work highlights how software such as Googleearth and Zeemaps offer analytical functions to map sport and physical activity practices, behaviours, trends and changes over time.
“Introducing students to these technologies is fun, exciting and challenging’, Dr Kohe suggests, ‘But, also really rewarding for the students when they can see how easily accessible digital tech can be to use and its relevance to their areas of sport and physical activity interest!”
Here, for example, Dr Kohe points to how the technologies have helped students examine post-sport mega event land use and rejuvenation, local community demographics and urban change, consumer experiences in sport venues. In practical sessions students are able to generate data about the sector and use this knowledge to develop responsive and responsible strategies for change, capacity building or sustainability. The approaches are now providing innovative ways for future sport graduates at Kent to gain a wider understanding of the complexities of the United Kingdom and international sport, physical activity and leisure sector.
These teaching and learning techniques are being used by Dr Kohe on the SSES’s BSc Sport Management Pathway degrees (see below).
New Sport Management BSc pathways – Inside Sport & Exercise Sciences (kent.ac.uk)
Please use this link to access the full paper:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FWIE6PDUJWCHGQ8XEHYI/full?target=10.1080/03098265.2023.2174961
Geoffery Z. Kohe & Nicholas Wise (2023): Spatialising Sport Management, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/03098265.2023.2174961