Social participation through sports and Olympic values: Discourse analysis through innovative teaching techniques

Abstract

Nowadays, the world is experiencing an intense and prolonged socio-economic crisis, which has been enhanced by the health crisis due to coronavirus. These crises had also a huge effect on the educational system. The academic world had to adjust rapidly and shift its teaching methods and tools to the demands of remote learning. These new circumstances are even more challenging in educational programs and courses that promote pluralism and include students from all over the world. In this paper, we study the opinions of the students at the Master Degree Program with the title "Olympic Studies, Olympic Education, Organization and Management of Olympic Events" offered by The Department of Sports Organization and Management of the Faculty of Human Movement and Quality of Life Sciences of the University of Peloponnese with the support of the International Olympic Academy for the academic year of 2021-2022. Our study aims to analyze the data collected through innovative teaching methods and to draw conclusions about students' feelings about distance education, participation and how we can better educate and pass on the necessary knowledge to future organizers of sporting events, executives close to children, and young people involved in sports, in order to cultivate Olympic values ​​and active political participation. Furthermore, we attempt to correlate the participation in sports with the active social participation and the contribution of sports to create a more transparent framework to the social integration of weak social groups.