Since I
didn’t have any online classes to teach this summer, I’ve been keeping myself
occupied by taking a few free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). My editor, Arran Gimba, at Oregon Sports News, was kind enough to direct the writing staff who was interested to SABR100x
Sabermetrics 101: Introduction to Baseball Analysis, which is being offered on
edX.org, taught by Andy Andres from Boston University. So, as “an amateur sabermetrician,” I naturally
signed up.
It’s been interesting and
enlightening finding myself in the role of student in an online course, since I’ve
occupied the role of instructor exclusively for close to ten years (twenty if
you include that 20th century antique called a “class room”). I find myself frequently wondering, “Do I do
that?” and “Do students find my classes as frustrating as I’m finding this one?”
The course is broken down into
essentially four tracks:
- Sabermetrics – where we explore baseball specific questions (how are runs created, etc.)
- Statistics – where we learn some basic statistics and how to apply them to our study of baseball
- Tech – where we learn to program in MySQL and R in order to find, sort, and graph data
- History – where we study the historical figures in the history of Sabermetrics
I’m killing sections 1 and 4,
holding my own in 2, and getting my lunch handed to me in section 3.
It seems with each programming
problem I’m presented with, there’s almost now corresponding instruction on how
to do what is asked. Or if there is instruction, it’s virtually unreadable from
these blurry videos. (As a person with
low vision, I always assume it’s just me that can’t see things, so I was
perversely happy to hear from my wife that “no, it’s the videos.”)
In the third week, when I really
started to encounter problems with the SQL programming, I resorted to just
skipping the Tech section all together and concentrating on Sabermetrics,
Statistics, and History. Then questions
started popping up in the Sabermetrics and Statistics sections that also
required me to enter programming syntax, mostly in R, which I never even got
to.
So, I realized I was going to
have to tackle this programming thing if I was going to pass the course.
My major resources?
- My SPSS guru wife.
- Another course on SQL online to fill in the blanks.
- Coding cheat sheets online.
- And, attempts at patience and humility, neither of which I’m very good at.
The first three have gotten me
about ½ the way through Module 3, where I last left off. I’ll need to finish 3, 4, and 5 in the next 9
days.
The latter has me thinking about
my own online instruction.
My wife was quick to point out
that when people are really good at something, they often are not the best at
teaching that something. They’ll take
certain knowledge for granted and skip things, which is what seems to have
happened around the place I got really confused.
The SQL for Beginners class I’m
taking, however, is excellent at not skipping things. Each concept is added to the other and then
we practice that one concept a few times, with a few variations.
Going forward in the Fall, I want
to try to be mindful of the content I’m delivering to my students and how I’m
delivering that content, while asking myself, “If I didn’t already know this
content, is there something important missing? ” And, in return, I want to share my experience
as a student this summer with my students and let them know I understand it can
be difficult, but you have to do the work.
So, back to SABRx100. I’m going to learn SQL and R.
