Reflections from the Student Side

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 20^th 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: 

1. Sabermetrics – where we explore baseball specific questions (how are runs created, etc.)
2. Statistics – where we learn some basic statistics and how to apply them to our study of baseball
3. Tech – where we learn to program in MySQL and R in order to find, sort, and graph data
4. 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.

Don't Call Johnny Manziel Un-American

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, several sports outlets reported that Johnny Manziel vacationed in Las Vegas for the holiday.  A photo of the new Cleveland Brown QB (third string, remember – that’s why they drafted him in the first round) and New England Patriot’s oft injured TE Rob Gronkowski, poolside, surrounded by bikini glad young women, swirled around the Twittersphere, causing many a pundit to ponder how Manziel could be so audacious.    

Well, Manziel is 21.  He’ll be 22 in December.  It’s legal for him to drink.  It’s legal for him to gamble.  I think it’s legal to hang out at a pool with young women in bikinis, although I have no firsthand knowledge of any such thing, as I didn’t have a copyrighted nickname to go with serious bank when I was 21.  So, what’s the big deal?

I’ll admit I’ve gone through three cycles now of indifference, loathing, and now kind of liking Manziel. 

I remember watching him almost single handedly beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa his freshman year and thinking, “that kid is pretty good.”  I was surprised a freshman won the Heisman trophy, but figured it was bound to happen eventually.  

 

The loathing part set in the summer following the Heisman when Manziel went insane frat boy and was in the news constantly.  And, yes, I realize he was doing what a lot of college kids do, but I don’t like them either.

Now that he’s landed in the pros in purgatory, otherwise known as Cleveland, I figure he’s adult earning money to play a kid’s game and he can do what he wants to do. 

To my knowledge, he hasn’t tested positive for any banned substances, or claimed he was taking them to increase his fertility, like Robert Mathis.  He hasn’t been caught on hotel surveillance cameras after knocking out his wife, like Ray Rice.  And, hopefully, he hasn’t murdered anyone that we’ll learn about in a few years, like Aaron Hernandez.

I think it would be great if Manziel turns out to be somewhere in the middle of the extremes that make professional sports and especially the NFL so tedious.  On the side of the ledger are the squeaky clean, too good to be true, dare I say politically correct, players like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady who never deviate from the script.  On the other side of the ledger are the Mathises and Rices and Hernandezes that make one feel a little uneasy for enjoying the sport if players like this play it, on drugs, or by extending violence beyond the field, or even murder.

Why couldn’t Manziel be like Joe Namath or Ken Stabler, two other SEC QB gods from the past?  As a leader of the Oakland Raiders in the 70’s, Stabler and others often stayed out late the night before games.  As long as it didn’t affect their play, Coach John Madden was fine with it.  And, Joe Namath was quoted once as saying, "It seems almost un-American to me for a bachelor not to go around having a drink with a lady now and then."  Well, wasn’t that all Manziel was doing in Vegas?  Namath and Stabler just didn’t have to worry about Twitter, that’s all.