Case study – Data insight offers university foresight
We spoke to Steve Osborne FCIMSPA (Chartered), Principal Lecturer, to hear how data has shaped Cardiff Metropolitan University’s new sport management training.
With the launch of CIMSPA’s insight services, we will be sharing a series of case studies on the value of insight and research into the sport and physical activity workforce. These will explore practical uses of the intelligence available through the stories of real users of the services.
Chair of the Sport and Physical Activity Workforce Observatory Board, Steve Osborne FCIMSPA (Chartered) has been instrumental in driving the use of data to design and justify practical solutions in developing our sector workforce. In his academic role, he has been able to use the CIMSPA data insight services to support the university in tailoring new education products to a growing audience of adult learners in the sport and physical activity sector.
Osborne knew that the sport and physical activity sector would have a management issue by 2030. In order to create a solution before the problem hit with full force, he consulted with the CIMSPA Insights team to explore the current situation and design an education product to expand the knowledge of sector managers, helping them to progress in their careers and fill skills gaps in the workforce.
When creating Cardiff Metropolitan University’s new Sport Management courses, the biggest challenge was to demonstrate that there was a need for this education product and that his proposal was a solution for the sector. This is a very important part of the higher education quality assurance process – to show that the lecturer wasn’t plucking an answer out of thin air, Osborne needed to demonstrate to the university expert engagement and hard proof that there was a need and a demand for the course before it was created.
The lecturer was keen to explain just how crucial data was to the sector training coming into being:
“The justification for design has got workforce planning and data right at the heart of the model. There’s no point in continuing unless you can substantiate what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how it’s scalable, that you’re going to resource it effectively and you can make effective design decisions.”
Working from these requirements, Steve collaborated with the CIMSPA team to ensure that he was able to justify the course, from content to delivery methods, and that this justification would stand up to strict scrutiny.
Together, they designed what Steve describes as a balanced-scorecard approach. This involved using a wide range of intelligence to create a clear and broad picture:
- Office of National Statistics (ONS) data
- Sector job advertisement data
- CIMSPA’s Data Lens
- Employee feedback
- Employer skills surveys from the Department for Education
This huge volume of data demonstrated a clear need for a new education offering. It showed that there was a high turnover in the workforce at entry manager level, with people transitioning from fitness or coaching roles or from further afield, but not staying for very long or progressing in their careers. It was clear to see that this is due to skills mismatches – highly qualified individuals lacking in specific expertise for a management role in sport and physical activity.
This has caused an imbalance. While there are many entry, duty and frontline managers working in the sector, few are progressing to become senior leaders. When current senior leaders retire, there will not be enough qualified and experience managers equipped to take on the newly available roles.
This information has allowed the Welsh university to prioritise their resources for designing the sport management training. While a small amount of data could have informed them of the need for sport management training, the insight provided by the comprehensive data picture the team collated allowed the university to respond specifically to the portion of the sector that needs the training the most. Responding to real need in this focused way sets the course up for success – not only for learners and sector growth, but for the university as a business, too. This gave Steve the justification for approval of the new courses and for the resources to develop and launch the learning product.
The CIMSPA data and intelligence also played a crucial role in deciding how the course would be delivered. By using Data Lens to analyse the demographic profile of the target audience, including age, gender and location, Steve was able to consider who the education was being designed for.
The reporting revealed that lower-level managers are generally young to middle-aged adults. By and large, universities cater their provision more to 18-to-24-year-olds, or “emerging adults”. With campus-based learning, this provides a real experience for young people who are not yet set on long-term employment or location and have few financial commitments or dependents. However, for the slightly older group highlighted by the data as being the course’s target audience, a campus experience is not necessary and can even be a deterrent. With a mortgage, a job, a family and an irregular shift pattern, this immersive learning style is often unfeasible for those already working.
Putting this group identified by the data at the centre of the course design ensures that the university are able to communicate effectively with relevant consumers and that learners will actually have access to the knowledge on offer. On a practical level, this meant designing the course around the growing format of micro-credentials.
As a result, the decision was not only made to deliver the content online, a common learning method in a digital age, but also to create an entirely new structure. Analysing the demographic identified by the CIMSPA team highlighted that working professionals are often unable to commit to a full degree programme, for reasons spanning from cost to available time.
To offer the greatest adaptability for learners that have specialist needs in comparison to school leavers, Osborne chose to create a compromise between flexibility and offering the wraparound support and engagement that traditional education offers:
“Thinking about a sports manager or a full-time coach, we considered what barriers they might face to re-entering education. We were able to build a picture of what was needed with the intelligence CIMSPA compiled, and the data helped us to make design decisions and shape the learning content and experience.”
Through bite-sized modules offering a standalone credential that can be stacked to create a qualification, the sport management micro-credential pathway is directly aimed at ensuring that working professionals can get the most out of their learning and gain the knowledge required to progress in their career as a manager.
Using the data as a guide for each element, practical examples of this tailoring include using online virtual reality environments to engage learners while enabling them to study around their work or other commitments. This is complemented by the supportive touch of a personal tutor, available for drop-ins and one-to-one sessions to answer questions, offer advice and make the difference between the tailored learning solution and fully online, independently completed courses.
The proof of data-backed concept has since materialised – the first sport management micro-credential module has been piloted with a group of adult learners in real managerial or development officer roles. With positive feedback collected, the initial launch was a success. As well as finding the learning materials valuable for their careers, course attendees were pleased with the option to navigate the training at their own pace, finding their own study patterns to suit their busy lives and working roles.
Being able to evaluate the ideas and solutions formed from the basis of the data has allowed Cardiff Metropolitan University to finish the development cycle and launch the courses fully, with the first running from October 2024.
Moving forwards, Steve Osborne intends to continue benefiting from the data provided. He expressed that some of the data collected when working with the CIMSPA Insights team was surprising.
Dispelling myths about how young people think, data on career mindset revealed that 18-year-olds are not exclusively interested in the university experience – they are looking to set themselves up for a long-lasting career and engage in conversations about this from the start. This has enabled Osborne to have further conversations about career-focused education in other areas, including how programmes for 16-to-18-year-olds are designed to suit that very different target audience.
In terms of further applications of the data about adult learners, Osborne was interested to discover that it’s not only employers that invest in training and development, but large numbers of individuals are taking ownership of their career progression and finding education opportunities for themselves.
There is more research to be done here, but the initial findings from the CIMSPA insights he received could help to shape the future of Osborne’s approach to course design and justification. He explained how important it is to have foresight:
“We can use data to identify what questions we should be asking. We don’t have to continue reacting to problems – we can dispel myths, inform our practice and inform our investments.”
With the new lifelong learning entitlement policy shaping the future of adult education, data insights like those used by Cardiff Metropolitan University are essential to ensuring that training is tailored to this target audience with unique needs and gaining foresight into trends to come.
The new CIMSPA insight services have the ability to impact the sport and physical activity sector in a major way. With businesses benefiting from real and detailed data about the workforce, it’s possible to create targeted solutions that enable sustainable growth – whether that’s a targeted view with Data Lens, more in-depth information with reports or a large-scale project with bespoke consultancy support.
