Different uses of video in referee training: interests and limits of 360° recordings
Résumé
Introduction
Video is widely used in sport for training and performance optimization. Refereeing is no exception to this trend. One of the major challenges is to provide training and educational environments that reflect faithfully the contexts in which referees officiate. To reinforce the ecological relevance of the videos used for training, research suggested to use recordings from embedded cameras, recently 360° embedded recordings. Within referee training systems, video can be used in different ways: (1) to practice decision making with the supports of video clips in order to identify a correct decision in a normative way, or (2) to encourage the referee’s reflexivity.
We have developed a training dedicated to the use of video to help young soccer and rugby referees to progress in refereeing. Insofar as videos are most often used in a normative way, i.e. to indentify good and bad decisions, one of the challenges of this training is to open referees to other uses of video, particularly more reflective uses. To do this, we design on-line exercices for young referees. These exercices are based on match excerpts in 360° videos of a peer referee. If the first one lets them free to use it, the following ones inciting them to adopt different perspectives in viewing and projecting themselves differently in the videos.
The objective of this exploratory research is to investigate the way young referees uses the 360° when carrying out these exercises.
Method
For this exploratory research, 12 referees who were also students have done the on-line exercises. So doing, they produced several written answers. A grounded analysis of these answers leads to identify the main focuses of the referees when viewing the 360° videos but also to distinguish different cognitive postures.
Results
The grounded analysis allows us:
(1) to show, no surprise, the referee behavior and the ball out are markers to describe what happens on the video,
(2) to distinguish two kinds of focus on the unfolding of the play and another one on the referee activity
(3) to characterize different perspectives according to which referees use video and to initiate a reflection on a differentiation of several types of immersion: empathic, simulation, exploratory.
These results lead to proposals for the evolution of 360° video supports to design training courses for referees.