The effectiveness of the overlapping waves strategy in learning some basic freestyle swimming skills for college students

Abstract

The study aimed to prepare educational units using the overlapping waves strategy in teaching some basic swimming skills, and to identify the effect of the prepared educational units in teaching some basic swimming skills to the research sample.  The researchers chose their research community from the first-year students at the College of Physical Soil and Sports Sciences/University of Mosul, who numbered (351) students for the year 2023-2024. As for the research sample that was chosen randomly from the research community, it amounted to (66) students from the first stage.  The first was in the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences, divided equally into two groups, the experimental group (30) students and the control group (30) students, and (6) students were excluded to conduct exploratory experiments for the research from the same research community. After that, educational units were designed according to the overlapping waves strategy and applied.  The experiment lasted for (4) weeks, with an educational unit per week lasting 90 minutes for a period of one month. The post-test was conducted and the researcher used the statistical package to reach the results. The research reached the following conclusions: The members of the experimental group that used the overlapping waves strategy excelled in learning some basic swimming skills.  (breath suppression, buoyancy ability, forward flow). The overlapping waves approach was a reason for overcoming the fear factor of the aquatic ocean by creating an atmosphere of joy, pleasure, excitement, and competition. Based on the conclusions reached by the researchers, they recommend emphasizing the use of the overlapping waves strategy.  To learn basic swimming skills (holding breath, buoyancy ability, forward flow), benefiting from the method of cooperative groups in the effort expended in the educational process.