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Despite all of the technological advancements in golf instruction, the plight of poor learning retention has driven more than a few coaches and students away from the lesson tee.
I am one of them.
Before working full-time at Global Golf Post, I taught for three years in South Florida as a PGA professional at a private academy. Although there were many joyous moments during my teaching, one frustrating scenario played itself out constantly: A student would excel in a lesson, leave satisfied with a desire to learn more, and then come back the following week exhibiting the same problems from the original lesson. The drills I asked them to complete were put on the backburner as other life activities took priority and progress was slower than rush-hour traffic inching along I-95.
Even though I came in with a well-structured lesson plan and most of my students wanted to learn, I found myself as the sole owner of the process that isn’t productive for either party.
For one, it’s harder on the teacher. I pulled my hair out trying to design lesson plans that would be easier to retain, working twice as hard to go half as far. That’s not ideal when your job is battling the elements for 12 hours a day, rescheduling around rain delays, stretching yourself thin both mentally and physically. And from the student perspective, hearing the same instruction too many weeks in a row got old in a short amount of time. On more than one occasion, I felt guilty for charging money when I knew the student hadn’t gotten better and was going through the motions.
As a father of two golf-obsessed kids who could never fully thrive in the traditional lesson format, former Callaway Golf sales manager Jim Shalhoup recognized this issue. It sent him on a path to creating Ikonik, a mobile platform that curates golf instruction content within learning modules so students can see their tasks, understand how much progress they have made and communicate efficiently with their coach.
“I looked at the business and saw what I felt was the hole in the value chain, which was that students don’t really retain that much in a lesson,” Shalhoup said. “I felt like if we could flip the classroom and put all of the learning materials up front and put the students into a process, then we would have a chance of them actually doing the work and retaining it.
“That’s how we built the app. Truthfully, our whole application wasn’t about building a cool tool. It was built from the learner back. We work with what we call process training, which is to test, teach, train and then test again. I would love to tell you I am the genius who came up with that, but all proven teaching and learning is that way.”
Ikonik officially unveiled its product last month after a soft launch earlier this year that featured some 300 coaches and 750 students. It revolves around both the coach and student being able to track progress within modules. Coaches can upload their whole lesson book for the student to see, creating a list of activities for the student outside of the hour-long weekly range session where only so much can get accomplished.
Not unlike on-demand streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon, Ikonik is on-demand golf instruction. Brian Jacobs, a lead instructor at the Golf Channel Academy, is an early adopter of the platform and jokingly calls it “teaching for dummies” because of how simple it is for a coach to upload his or her lesson plan and follow through with students to see how they have done.
“You’re not necessarily teaching for the test, you’re just moving a student along through the platform and we can both see what skills they have become adept at and what skills they need to work on."
Brian Jacobs
Jacobs, who added 10 remote clients during the beta testing period, says the new format could be particularly impactful for both young teachers and young students.
“It’s authentic in the way a student should learn,” Jacobs said. “You’re not necessarily teaching for the test, you’re just moving a student along through the platform and we can both see what skills they have become adept at and what skills they need to work on.
“Before I used this, student communication was a little all over the place with e-mailing, texting, attaching different videos – you were spending more time than if you just saw them in person. This is cleaner and more to the point where you just add notes right into the app.”
Although Jacobs uses Ikonik as a blended program where most students come in for in-person instruction in addition to on-demand instruction, he now has full days where he gives lessons solely from home. Jacobs says it is also easier for him to monetize his business that way because he can track students’ activity levels and give them a nudge when they aren’t participating.
“There is going to be a percentage of people who really prefer to learn this way,” Jacobs said. “They don’t want to drive to your academy, they want you to come to them.”
Ikonik’s arrival fits the times in one way – during the COVID-19 pandemic large numbers of activities have gone virtual. Much as businesses have flocked to Zoom to communicate without in-person meetings, golf lessons are a natural fit to be completed in a more compact, efficient setting.
There always will be a place for in-person lessons, but it only makes sense that a student would have more control of their progression so they can be empowered to think, act and play on their own. It won’t be a surprise to see golf coaching lean heavily toward on-demand learning in the future, and Ikonik may be one of the leaders moving that trend forward.
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