Online training of sports coaches: bibliographic review

The current situation created by the global COVID-19 pandemic has put distance learning to the test at an unprecedented scale. The purpose of this study was to review the existing literature on online education of sports coaches carried out by official institutions (public bodies, federations, universities) and unofficial institutions (foundations, service companies and other educational organisations) through a systematic search of various databases. Data on study design, participants, variables, instruments, and results were extracted. After a selective search of the articles, the PRISMA checklist was used to select suitable articles for subsequent analysis and evaluation, which was carried out using the modified version of the Downs & Black checklist (1998). Fourteen descriptive and review studies were analysed for the coaches online learning preferences, its functionality and the applicable improvements. The analysis of the content of the articles allowed the identification of four main lines of research: description of the technological and computer tools available to the coaches, examination of the coaches' preferences, analysis of the use of resources by the coaches, and evaluation of the effectiveness of existing resources. The analysis of all of them allowed us to conclude that online learning is an extremely useful resource for the education of coaches, due to its advantages over traditional learning, despite some limitations such as the absence of physical interaction.