We know you may have questions about earning your National, Advanced National, or Premier in our blended format and we want to answer those questions for you! Check out this snippet from our Match Day Webinar Series hosted by Associate Director of Coaching Content Vince Ganzberg, featuring Advanced Diploma Instructors: Deb Raber, Brandon Silva, and Steve Ryan. We’ve included a transcript of some of the questions the panel received live during the webinar.
What is Phase 2 of the Blended Format like?
Deb Raber: The exciting thing is, and I’ll preface this, is that the people who are the authors of these three courses, so myself, Steve, Brandon, and then Paul Marco. The amount of time we spent on calls together to make sure it was a seamless flow from one course to the next to the next. It was amazing to be a part of it and the amount of sharing that all of us did throughout the process, it was exciting. It was like it was my own professional development, listening to everyone else speak and share.
So when everyone is done with their Phase 1 and we move on to Phase 2, then you’re going to come into a Zoom room and hangout with myself or another instructor, specific to the topic, where say we talk about in the National course we’ll talk about principles of play and practice planning one night. Then on another night, we’re going to talk about program leadership with Ben Freakley and myself on ethics and then another session is going to be based on shaping the team. Then we’re also going to be together, actually all the courses together with Ian Donnelly, so that we can learn a lot more about iSport Analysis. Then we have another session, again opened up to everyone across all three courses for a diversity session as well.
So I think it’s going to be an opportunity where, you know typically we’re hanging out down in the hotel lobby sharing ideas amongst coaches, this is going to give us the opportunity to share some amazing ideas and have the coaches share their ideas as we progress through the courses. So there’s still a built-in sharing time that we strongly believe is a vital component to all of our courses.
I’m currently working on my D License and plan to earn my C License, does it make sense for me to skip the National and begin my Advanced National instead?
Deb Raber: I think the information and two other coaches have already alluded to this as well. I think the information that was put together really builds one upon the next. So I think skipping the National, you’ll miss out on some really solid information that would help you be successful in the Advanced National course. And as a coach, I always tell coaches don’t rush the journey. It’s all about learning and there are some amazing things that coaches if they did skip the National, would miss out on that would help them in the Advanced National.
Steve Ryan: I think that because we worked together on three courses and Deb worked really hard on establishing a vocabulary and a foundation that I think if you’re doing the D License into the C License it will fit kind of nicely. The National is and has more content and is more involved than the D License. So I think I would go with the National.
Do cohorts choose the synchronous meeting time since it’s across all time zones?
Vince Ganzberg: No and here’s how and here’s why. We’re going to set up times and they’ll primarily be in the evenings. However, all the meetings will be recorded. So you don’t have to go and watch them live. We would love for you to, if you can. But if you can’t you’ll get the recording the next day, you can watch the recording and then there’s an assignment that will tie into that synchronous learning opportunity that you either watched live or watched on recording. And then you just type it in another PDF fillable that you’ll receive. So you mentioned throughout all time zones, I think that in a perfect world we would have one in the daytime and one in the night time, but Steven and Brandon are school teachers, Deb’s a professor, and we’ve got all these other instructors that are kind of really busy with their normal lives. We also recognize though, however, that people that are taking it might be school teachers. So, they might be free at night, but not during the day. And then we got people that make their living on the fields at night. Right, so they got more time in the day, but they’re on the fields with their clubs or whatever at night. So, it’s the best we can do. It will be set up with a set time per week.
Additional Questions
If you have additional questions about the blended format or United Soccer Coaches Education please check out our Education FAQ, if you don’t see an answer there, please reach out to us at our Help Center.