DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF E-MODULAR INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS TO MINIMIZE ERRORS IN DECISION MAKING AMONG SAUDI FOOTBALL REFEREES

Abstract

Football is one of the most popular sports in the world. The referees are decision-makers during the match and sometimes make errors in the decision-making. These decision-making errors were attributed to emotional, physical, or personal traits and environmental factors. There were reported cases in which the Saudi referees made mistakes, and after scrutiny of their activities, those referees were sacked to serve as a deterrent to others. The main aim of this research is to investigate how modular instructional materials can be used to minimize errors in decision-making among Saudi referees. Also, this research develops e-module based learning for the Referees decision-making skills. A four-step method that included definition, design, development, and dissemination was used to develop an e-module. A total of 90 football referees have volunteered to take part in this study. Their age range is between 25 and 45 years old. They were randomly selected into two groups, consisting of 45 participants in each group, for the experimental purpose. The two groups underwent both the pre-test and the post-test. The two groups were tested before and after the training session. The control group was exposed to a logbook, while the experimental group was exposed to a decision-making e-module. The result shows that the experimental group was able to improve their decision-making ability on handball, law 1, challenge, penalty area incidents, offside, tactical foul, and law 2 over the control group. According to the findings, it is clear that using the e-module significantly improved the referees' ability to make decisions, which decreased the number of errors they committed. This study helped the Saudi football referees to enhance their decision-making abilities by developing an electronic module that enables participants to watch videos and a full explanation of the correct decision, and the elements that contributed to the decision-making. This study recommends creating video tests that require three choices to answer the question: first the decision, then the disciplinary decision, and adding the third option that represents the reason or consideration on which the correct answer is based. The addition of the third option shows the researchers how much more accurately the participant took advantage of the e-module. Researchers in the future ought to think about enlarging the sample to include more sports. A new theoretical framework for future research should be considered.