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Introduction:

For this Recommendation Report, our goal was to recommend the Director of Champions Together, Lee Lonzo, a strategy that appeals to the youth of Indiana. We worked closely with 23 high schools who have already implemented Champions Together in their school in order to find recommendations to present to the 280 other high schools in Indiana whom have not yet implemented Champions Together. We surveyed 23 of the 26 Champions Together high schools asking how the addition of Champions Together has benefited their high schools. The goal of the survey was to determine how large of an online presence Champions Together has and how satisfied these high schools are with the implementation of Champions Together. Expanding the presence of Champions Together across social media platforms and within schools is crucial to the growth of this partnership.

Methodology:

Our aim in this report was to examine the most reliable, up-to-date and accurate information available so that we could make well-informed recommendations for the implementation of Champions Together. To this end, we employed the use of several databases, scholarly articles, an Indiana-based survey and we inspected the presence of Champions Together on widely used social media platforms. We tried to gather the best information to support our recommendations.

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Database Research

Our team utilized IUPUI databases to conduct our research, where we had access to thousands of academic journals and articles but the main databases used were EBSCO Academic Search Premier and ProQuest. These are private databases containing over 364,000 scholarly articles and journals.

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Familiarizing Ourselves with Champions Together

In order to be able to make recommendations, the first step our team took was to become acquainted with the purposes of Champions Together and the effects it has had on all people involved. We split topics to research among ourselves. The main sections explored were mental and physical health benefits of competitive sports to students with intellectual disabilities, impact on leadership within sports teams, development and diversification of students’ skills as well as coach’s skills and the increased inclusivity of students with intellectual disabilities.

 

Researching the Techniques of Online Marketing and Figuring Out Our Target Audience

Once we had a strong grasp on the benefits of Champions Together, we started researching strategies on the best ways to carry out its online marketing. Our aim was to gather data regarding which social media platforms are the most effective in gaining the attention of our targeted audience, which was high school students in Indiana who do not participate in Champions Together and who do not have disabilities. We also examined data relating to social media posting techniques and algorithms that have the strongest impact and outreach according to a given audience. The search terms used on databases were ‘social media and twitter’ and ‘social media and Instagram’ as well as ‘social media marketing’.

 

Survey-based Research

We used a google survey to collect data regarding the opinions around Champions Together from the athletic directors of the schools where Champions Together is already implemented. Our aim was to gauge how Champions Together was perceived by the people involved in it as well as how prevalent is was on social media. We also wanted to see whether the people involved with Champions Together thought that it had a decent online presence or whether they thought its social media promoting should be improved.

 

Our target audience for the survey were the athletic directors of the schools where Champions Together has been implemented. The survey contained nine questions, eight of which were multiple choice and one question at the end for them to type in their questions or concerns. The themes of the survey questions revolved around the extent of Champion Togethers’ presence and impact on social media as well as the effect that Champions Together has had on the leadership skills and social abilities of students with intellectual disabilities. A complete list of the survey questions can be found in Appendix B.

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