PhD, Associate Professor N.B. Serova¹
PhD L.K. Tropina¹
PhD, Associate Professor T.B. Golubeva¹
T.N. Karfidova^1
1Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg

Keywords: technology-prioritizing approach, physical education, sport and health service, service design.

Background. The large-scale national programs to promote popular physical education and sports and popularize healthy lifestyles need to be supported by the physical education and sports service providing organizations with a special priority to the physical education and sports service quality and modern technologies. The physical education and sports service technologies improvement projects shall include the service modernization components with due attention to every service-related process and practice. Every technological operation and process stage shall be as perfect as possible to secure the best service quality and comfort standards for the clients and employ the corporate resource in a most efficient manner. This goal may not be attained unless every process stage is well thought through and formalized as a service technology with its stages, operations, toolkit and necessary service equipment and accessories.

Objective of the study was to analyze benefits of the technology-prioritizing approach in the physical education, sport and health service design.

Methods and structure of the study. The technology-prioritizing approach to theoretical analysis of many research subjects was conceived and effectively developed by technical sciences albeit the notion of technology nowadays is widely applied by many disciplines and domains other then the engineering science and industry – including medicine, education, politics, socio-cultural sector, advertising business, design etc. This fact gives the grounds to interpret technology as (1) the productive practical service that claims certain resources and tools with the relevant implementation and process management procedures to secure production and quality of the products/ services and other deliverables with the desired qualitative/ quantitative specifications; 2) theoretical and practical knowledge to secure efficiency and effectiveness of the process; and (3) the relevant education discipline to facilitate inflow of human resource with the required technological competencies and skills.

Presently the relevant economic sectors and operators apply the so-called technological charts/ maps to spell out every element of the applied technology. Technological chart may be defined as the technological process profile that spells out the necessary equipment, tools and accessories within some timeframe [4]. Such technology presentation/ documentation format is increasingly applied in the socio-cultural domain as well. Thus the education system widely uses the relevant technological charts to analyze the education process and present it by matrixes with the sessions, learning stages, teacher’s/ student’s contributions, process data, required cooperation of the process contributors etc. It has also become traditional for the modern tourist businesses, for instance, to provide the service descriptions with the tour program content, service elements, conditions etc. to give a comprehensive road map for every tour [2].

One of the key problems for the service technology mapping efforts in the physical education and sports sector is the wide range of the modern physical education and sports services and their high sensitivity to fashions, seasons and many other factors of influence, with the situation further aggravated by the shortage of formalized/ documented technological charts – that have become almost traditional for many socio-cultural sector domains/ disciplines where the detailed descriptions of the process technologies have proved beneficial.

The valid physical education and sports standards spell out only the key notions with concern to the service technologies. As provided by the GOST standards, a physical education and sports service process means the set of operations offered by the service provider to consumer via a direct contact [3]. A modern corporate service process, however, includes both the direct client service operations and the overhead services i.e. supplementary/ supportive ones [1]. The corporate physical education and sports services require the relevant service facilities, installations, spaces, equipment (with its operation, maintenance and relocation charts), consumable materials and the service data mining, collection, processing and distribution charts; with the relevant job responsibilities for the physical education and sports management, engineering, transport, storage and other units of the physical education and sports companies. Every consumer service in the physical education and sports sector shall be rated and ranked with the service technologies and processes including, for instance, the training/ education sessions. There are also many supplementary processes and services including the indoor facilities and equipment maintenance and operation ones. It is clear, therefore, that every physical education and sports service project shall map out every service technology to analyze the service process on the whole.

Results and discussion. The proposed technology-prioritizing approach has been tested in practice in the bachelor training curricula for the Service and Health Sport Service disciplines; and master training curricula for the Service in the Health Sport Sector discipline at the Physical Education, Sport and Youth Policy Institute of the Ural Federal University. The training includes the class studies, industrial practices, and a range of the interim and final project designs to help the students make their ways to the professional community. The trainings course Service, for instance, was designed with a special priority to practical issues, with the students expected to demonstrate in examinations benefits of the new service products of their own designs with contributions from the modern service technologies.

It should be mentioned that since 2006 the physical education and sports department has offered training in Socio-cultural Service and Tourism discipline; and since 2011 the master and bachelor Sport Industry Service and bachelor Sport and Health Service disciplines.

The education system in Yekaterinburg is increasingly competitive since the municipal situation is demographically complicated and the city hosts nine universities and fifteen colleges specialized in the socio-cultural service education and making transition to the physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing curricula as required by the practical interests of the student communities. Thus in 2013-18 the special Socio-cultural Service and Tourism, bachelor Socio-cultural Service, bachelor Sport and Health Service, master Socio-cultural Service and the Sport Industry Service courses have trained 303 graduates, and 116 of them (38.3%) defended their diploma projects in many physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service matters. The universities and colleges report the senior students’ interest in Sport and Health Service trainings being on the rise for the last few years. Thus 19.7% of the graduate students specialized in the Sport and Health Service in 2013 versus 33.3% in 2018. Given in the Table hereunder are the interests of the graduate students in different physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing services reported by the diploma project statistics. Note that the Service Technology item reflects the diploma projects in the following aspects: process technology if any with description; process technology stages; and technological operations; and the Service Growth Programs item represents the diploma projects specifying the process technology stages with the detailed descriptions.

Table 1. Special physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service topics in the graduate diploma project statistics versus the total graduates, %

The diploma projects classified with the ‘Popular physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing services in need of physical education and sports service infrastructure’ group studied the following issues: (1) Sport infrastructure (training systems, equipment, apparatuses and accessories) usage technologies applicable by the sport industry operators; health/ recreation technologies, physical education and sports industry/ sport club service growth projects; client/ personnel loyalty securing projects; and the corporate service efficiency improvement projects; (2) Comfort/ leisure-time physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service quality improvement projects; health/ recreation tours and sport fans’ tours to the sports events; corporate recreation projects for sanatoria and tourist bases; sport/ active recreation service goods and their marketing; and the inclusive/ accessible physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing services for the people with health limitations; (3) Skilled human resource training projects for the physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service companies; health/ rehabilitation service projects; active recreation/ leisure-time activity projects, including those for the beauty industry; fitness, SPA-business, quest and other relevant projects.

The diploma projects classified with the ‘Physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing trainings’ group studied the following issues: competitions of the study groups, teams, schools and sport clubs; leisure-time sporting/ recreation events including active games and entertainments; sports-welcoming festivals, including healthy lifestyle events, dance classes etc.; trekking tours and excursions; children summer health camps etc.

And the diploma projects classified with the  ‘Sport/ entertainment events’ group studied the following issues: sport/ entertainment event/ concert organization and management technologies; sport tournament/ cross-country race/ marathon/ team sport event servicing/ management technologies etc.

It may be also pertinent to mention the sport equipment leasing/ servicing technologies (virtually unaddressed by the available reference literature) among the other topics of the graduates’ diploma projects for the study period. Therefore, the graduates demonstrated their competencies and skills in the physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service project designs to meet the service market demand, with many projects proved successful as verified by the project implementation certificates and publications of high interest for the professional physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service community.

Conclusion. The physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service technology design projects with the process algorithms, technological charts, descriptions and manuals have proved beneficial as they help put the service on a structured and efficient basis; improve the service management; regulate every service process/ aspect as required by the expected deliverables; step up the service dependability by the relevant technological specifications; improve profitability of the physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service operators and sport industry; and put the sector operations on a cost-efficient basis.

References

1. Vinogradova M.V., Panina Z.I. Organizatsiya i planirovanie deyatelnosti predpriyatiy sfery servisa [Organization and planning of activity of enterprises in the service sector]. 8th ed.. Moscow: Dashkov i K, 2014, pp.17-23.
2. GOST R 50681-2010. Turistskie uslugi. Proektirovanie turistskikh uslug [GOST R 50681-2010. Tourism services. Design of tourism services].
3. GOST R 52024-2003. Uslugi fizkulturno-ozdorovitelnye i sportivnye. Obschie trebovaniya [GOST R 52024-2003. Health and sports services. General requirements].
4. Raizberg B.A., Lozovskiy L.Sh., Starodubtseva E.B. Sovremenny ekonomicheskiy slovar [Modern dictionary of economics]. 6th ed.,rev., sup.. Moscow: (INFRA-M), 2011 [Electronic resource]. Available at: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_67315/ (date of access: 20.09.2018).

Corresponding author: lktr@mail.ru

Abstract

The study analyzes benefits of the technology-prioritizing approach in the physical education, sport and health service design, with the approach analyzed in application to the socio-cultural domain. Benefits of the technology-prioritizing approach in the service design include, among other things, a clear-cut algorithm for the service provider with a standard sequence of the service operations with improvements in the service efficiency, effectiveness and quality. The proposed technology-prioritizing approach has been tested in practice in the bachelor training curricula for the Service and Health Sport Service disciplines; and master training curricula for the Service in the Health Sport Sector discipline at the Physical Education, Sport and Youth Policy Institute of the Ural Federal University. Subject to a special analysis under the study were benefits of the new approach verified by the physical education and sports-and-health-prioritizing service designs made in the final examination works by the bachelor and master course students in the period of 2013-18.