NIAAA offers free online workshops for athletic administrators

With the rest of the country attempting to carry on their everyday lives with web-based technology such as Zoom, athletic directors have the opportunity to work on professional development for free while working from home.

The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) has recently instituted a variety of spring learning opportunities in lieu of many state athletic administrator association conferences being canceled across the country.

These opportunities include daytime webinars, evening webinars and free workshops for members that may have been affected by regional cancellations.

Daytime webinars take place from 1 PM to 5 PM EST and participants must be present for the entirety of the session to receive credit. A list of available daytime webinars can be found here.

Additionally, there are free live digital workshops presented at 2:30 PM EST by athletic directors from all over the country. Every Tuesday and Thursday these workshops will last approximately an hour and will provide pertinent information to current issues athletic administrators are facing. The live presentations are capped to 300 participants but are available in the NIAAA’s archives after the event has finished. Credit will not be given for these workshops.

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The live workshop on Tuesday, April 7 dealt with recognizing signs of student-athlete stress and anxiety while Wednesday, April 8’s touched on how to improve as an effective communicator.

Finally, online courses are available year-round in the NIAAA classroom. These are meant to be interactive courses that can be taken on one’s own time, at one’s own pace. Each course, which lasts four hours, includes a digital manual, an interactive teaching style, instructional videos and an acknowledgment of course completion.