The German Sport University Cologne is Germany’s only, and Europe’s largest, university in the field of sport and exercise science. It comprises 20 academic institutes, four affiliate institutes as well as 12 academic centres and research units. The institute’s Swim Research Group holds a strong interest in learn-to-swim educational concepts. Herein, its focus ranges from assessing basic aquatic skills in (pre)school children to analysing succeeding predictors in talent promoting/talent identification programmes and further on to consecutive performances among age group swimmers competing at national and international levels.
Ilka Staub is a Researcher in Swimming and Aquatics at the Institute of Professional Sport Education and Sport Qualification at the German Sport University Cologne. She did her PhD on “Performance development in junior competitive swimming: Empirical findings and consequences”, she acts as speaker at national and international conferences of advanced coaches’ education. Ilka Staub has published peer-reviewed articles on long-term athlete development and swimmming education and holds a German Swimming Association’s swim coach license (A, competitive sports). Moreover, she is a founding member and president of the swimming club Kopfsprung Köln e.V.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt acts as Vice-President Research and Transfer at the German Sport University Cologne where he heads the Institute of Professional Sport Education and Sport Qualifications. The institute comprises educational and research areas in sports, including Badminton, Gymnastics, Football, Swimming, Tennis and Volleyball. In its areas of sport-specific expertise, the educational responsibilities of the institute lie within the university’s Bachelor and Master courses, primarily for Physical Education teachers as well as for sport-specific qualifications. Moreover, Tobias Vogt hold an Adjunct Professorship at Waseda University’s Faculty of Sport Sciences, Japan and is a Fellow of the European College of Sport Science where he serves as Member of its Scientific Committee. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on sport-specific movement learning and skill acquisition in renowned scientific journals.
