Volleyball

Anytime I have a chance to play volleyball, it's a good thing. It comes as no surprise then that another of the best classes I ever took was volleyball. Priority registration was ultra helpful in getting me into this ever popular class.

As I think about this class, I'm reminded of a comment made by someone several months ago on an online story about Western Governors University, my current employer. At the time, they were working to launch WGU Washington, so the news was covering the discussion. In supporting the establishment of WGU Washington, this commenter pointed out that he didn't think it was his responsibility as a taxpayer to subsidize young adults' self discovery. That is a whole discussion in and of itself and one of which I could argue either side (possibly three different sides).

As an institution of adult education, WGU focuses on getting down to business and providing students with what will really help them advance their careers. These are generally older, more mature students who don't need personal enrichment as much as they need advanced skills and credentials. Institutions serving traditional college-aged students have some responsibility, I believe, to help them be well-rounded members of society. Part of that would be encouraging physical activity that will reduce their physical well-roundedness.

Yes, I am now pondering how we could create a physical education program at an online school. I can see a log of hours spent practicing at the local gym, video of running through certain drills, and submission of results from a tournament the student participates in for a culminating experience.

An important part of the class I took was dedicated time for drilling and skill development. Just running out there and playing any sport is not an effective way of doing things (not to say it can't be fun). By taking the time to practice specific skills, when it comes times to use those skills in a game situation, you'll perform properly without having to think about it and with less likelihood of hurting yourself.

The middle of a game is not the best time to try something you've never done before. In low pressure environments like pick-up games with friends, it's a safe place to fail and try new things, and may in fact be encouraged by the group, but it's still not an effective way of perfecting a skill. Of course, outside of sports that's good advice for professional activities like giving presentations or using software to analyze data. Having an environment where it is safe to fail within your team but where everyone is well prepared and polished when working with outside stakeholders provides opportunities both to learn and to successfully perform at a high level. Yes, I'm still trying to justify the online volleyball course.

So let's have it. What are some other ideas for awesome online courses in subjects that don't initially seem like they would fit an online model?

Sign Language

I'm not totally sure why I decided to take a Sign Language class my freshman year. I remember there was a football player in the class, wanting to be able to communicate better with a deaf teammate. I don't think he lasted very long in the class. I stayed in the class the whole time but didn't do very well, like anyone learning a brand new language, and having not used it since, I've forgotten most of it. I do know that playing the telephone game in American Sign Language (ASL) gets you about the same results as the whispering version, where you end up with a totally different message by the time you make it around the circle.

Something interesting about ASL that may seem obvious to some and not so much to others is that it is distinct from English. There is Manually Coded English (MCE) which is basically a word for word translation from English, generally following its grammar rules, but that's not what two people signing to each other are likely to use. ASL has its own grammar rules, not to mention some extra features. Obviously body language and facial expressions are important in spoken conversations, but they are even more important when signing.

I find the spatial nature of the language fascinating. Think of the way you might write a paragraph talking about a person. The first time you mention him or her, you would say the name, and generally from then on you would use the pronoun he or she, at least until it starts getting confusing if other hes or shes are involved. You can actually do a similar thing when signing, where instead of assigning a person, place, or thing to a pronoun, you assign them to spaces. So if you're talking about your boss and a coworker, you might sign your boss's name over toward your right side and your coworker's name toward your left side. If the boss gave something to the coworker, you would make the sign for give and move it from the boss' space to the coworker's space. Maybe it was a birthday gift and when your coworker regifts it to you for your birthday, you would then make the give sign and move it from the coworker's space toward yourself while making a kind of disgusted face.

Speaking of signing names, if someone is not Deaf (capital D, meaning they're part of the Deaf culture), they would just have an English name that is finger-spelled. You don't give yourself a name. A Deaf person gives you a namesign. It's kind of like the mountain men. You get a mountain man name from a mountain man as part of being accepted into the mountain man culture. Like mountain man names, namesigns are generally descriptive of a physical characteristic of the person or something he or she does. It may or may not be related to the given English name.

Something I learned not really related to the content of the class but that would be helpful in understanding the workings of college in general is that if you're taking a random elective and not receiving an awesome grade (think C), changing the class to Pass/Fail is a great option to not pull down your GPA. Of course, I learned this after I finished the class, not during it when it could have helped me. That's just another one of those things that an advisor could have told me during orientation instead of all the useless stuff they told us.

Intermediate Spanish

I actually took two in a series of Intermediate Spanish courses in back to back quarters, but I'm going to throw it out there that I don't remember the difference between the two. It seems that they were taught in the same classroom. I have no recollection of who taught the classes, but I do remember that some advanced Spanish students would come in to talk to us so we could practice speaking.

After learning a bit in junior high and high school and dropping my ridiculous AP Spanish class, over two years would go by before I would take another Spanish class. I picked it right back up again, though, and would actually do really well in both classes. These were probably the most important Spanish classes I would take, as they were beyond the basic level of high school Spanish and really prepared me by helping me solidify my grasp of the language.

I would talk sometimes with a girl in my apartment building who spoke Italian, and it was amazing how well we could understand each other. She wasn't Italian, just an American who spoke Italian, so with us both talking to each other in Romance languages and our American accents, it wasn't too hard to figure out what we were saying.

I still wonder what it is that makes so many Americans almost proud of the fact that they can only speak English. Learning another language helps you know your first language better by understanding how the various parts of speech work together. Having to consciously think about how all the parts work together helps you know why you're saying what you're saying instead of just saying what you hear, or think you hear, others say (like 'could of' where it should be 'could have' but who could of known which is right, since they sound the same when you talk fast?).

If you learn a language with a lot of the same Latin and/or Germanic roots as English, it can help you know what some of the more obscure English words mean, because they're similar to a common word in another language (like edifice and edificio, meaning building).

Racquetball

Racquetball was one of the bright spots of my freshman year. It's the only class I've taken with someone I was related to, my sister Christie. I had received a racquet for Christmas and bought some sweet new gym shoes while on vacation with the family in Florida.

I remember an odd couple my sister and I would pair up against in doubles occasionally. There was a younger, student-aged kid who played with an older guy who wore khaki pants and loafers. While playing. I know. I still can't figure that out. I remember that they would sometimes stand right up on the receiving line (the dotted line you stand behind while waiting for the serve) and try to take us off guard by hitting the ball really quickly instead of letting it bounce around off the back wall. Just that you're only surprised after they do it once or twice and then it simply becomes annoying. So you just softly lob it over their heads.

I would play off and on over the next who knows how many years but only really started playing consistently the last few years. It's been interesting as every time I kind of hit a plateau where I have felt like I've learned all I could, I'll start playing with someone new and learn all kinds of new things to try. That's a good metaphor for life. You can always learn something new from everyone you meet.

Multivariable Calculus

In Multivariable Calculus I earned the lowest grade I have ever received in any class in my entire life both up to that date and since (it's the one that isn't really failing but isn't really passing either). It was the nail in the coffin for my budding engineering career.

I still remember sitting there in the middle of the back row in the most uncomfortable wooden desk/chair combos in the H-shaped technology building. It was horrible. The only thing I learned was that I shouldn't go any further with math. The only other math courses I would take the rest of my college career would be statistics, which I would learn to love, but I no longer had any use for calculus.

Honors Orientation

The Honors program never made sense to me. Take harder classes and write extra papers in order to get a note on your transcript and diploma that you graduated with honors. Or you could just take the regular classes, not write extra papers, pull a decent GPA, and graduate cum laude. Yes, "cum laude" means "with honors".

I joined, because I thought it would be useful to get priority registration. At the time anyone could join their freshman year, no matter how well they did in high school, just by taking the orientation course. In addition to the priority registration, I also got a discounted ticket to the Chinese terra cotta warriors exhibit, which was pretty neat.

By the time I finished my freshman year, I was technically a junior with all my AP credits and other courses I had completed. The priority registration wasn't as useful, so it wasn't much of a blow when I got kicked out of the Honors program due to my calculus-laden GPA.

Whatever they talked about in this course (study skills, how to fill out your priority registration form, where the big bowl of candy was located in the honors lounge, etc.) it wasn't enough to make me try to get back in. Oh, I could have. Making the Dean's List every semester after my freshman year was over, I had that part down, but I was starting to improve my understanding about the differences between things that are useful and things that just make you feel like you worked really hard.

With that, I leave you with an essay question from the application to the current Honors program:

You return to your room in the residence hall next fall, and on the floor just outside the door you find a hard hat, a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, and one additional object. In addition to revealing the identity of the third object, explain how the hard hat, the book, and the third object got there and their significance.

Leave your response in the comments, and you could be awarded Blog Reader with Honors.

Computer Science II

I remember the room this CS course was in, one that I would later teach computer literacy courses in. We were continuing on in C++, which is what I had primarily worked with in the other programming classes I had taken up to this point.

I remember that we talked about multidimensional arrays, which made sense to me, and pointers, which didn't make sense to me. Which still don't make sense to me, beyond a superficial level anyway. I remember doing a lot more with inputting from and outputting to files rather than just prompts on the screen.

The programming was starting to get harder, and I was dealing with more of the frustration/joy cycle working out bugs in the programs I was writing. I still thought I wanted to be a programmer, and I started to think about changing from Electrical and Computer Engineering to Computer Science. I remember a roommate and I introducing ourselves at some get to know you thing. He went just before me, telling his name and that he was majoring in Business Information Systems, since he liked computers but didn't like programming. I went right after him, telling my name and that I was going into Computer Science, because I did like to program. Yeah, we'll see how long that would last.

July 2, 1986

A photo from 25 years ago, remembering the sad events of 10 years ago.

Calculus II

Having scored a 5 on AP Calculus, I was eligible to jump right into more advanced Calculus when I officially enrolled at the university. No one told me this would be a bad idea on many levels. I guess it's one of those things that advisors could tell you but don't, because they believe deep down that you'll learn better by figuring it out on your own than if they just told you everything up front.

Perhaps if I had been destined for engineering greatness, advanced Calculus would have been more natural for me. Perhaps if I'd worked harder, I would have done better than barely pass.

My professor was actually really good. He was engaging and knew his stuff. Whenever he talked about planes, you know the math kinds, he would switch over to this funny accent and start saying "de plane, boss, de plane!" I don't know if anyone else in the class knew what he was talking about, but I never did.



Until I just looked it up on YouTube and Wikipedia, I had a totally different picture of what he might be talking about. I pictured a deserted island with Tattoo as a humpback, and they were trying to be rescued. It turns out it's a fancy island with nice amenities and guests fly in, paying $50,000 to have their fantasies come true, and Tattoo is a midget. Who knew?

Engineering Orientation

After my awesome Physics class and doing well in Calculus, I was excited to declare as an Engineering major. I attended the summer general college orientation and dutifully signed up for all the courses my new advisor told me to take.

One of the courses new Engineering students take is Engineering Orientation. I don't remember much from it, other than it being in the engineering classroom building which is no longer standing, since it was replaced a few years ago by a new building. I also remember there was a computer lab we had to go to in order to run some special engineering software for some of our homework. It was largely about helping us determine the specific emphasis we would choose based on the types of jobs we were interested in and learning the resources available through the department.

Whenever I think of that now-demolished auditorium, I think back not first to the orientation class I had in it but an engineering test I took in that room during high school. From what I recall, students in certain math and science courses were invited go up to USU to take an engineering test that could potentially lead to a scholarship. I signed up for it, although I didn't know many other people from my high school who did.

The test was over the Thanksgiving break. My sisters were both attending USU at the time, so I stayed at their apartment. The timing was fortunate enough that I was able to participate in a Thanksgiving dinner they were holding for a few roommates, friends, and neighbors. It just so happened that one of my sisters' roommates had a brother who was also in town to take the engineering test. We nervously walked all the way across an empty campus together, found the right location, partook of the cheap glazed donuts that were provided, took the grueling test, for which I have no idea how I scored, and returned back to participate in the festivities.

What makes this so memorable was an ironic event during dinner preparations. The fastest and thus best way to cook a ton of potatoes for that well-loved side dish mashed potatoes is to use a pressure cooker. Maybe you know where I'm going with this already. Older pressure cookers didn't always have safety latches and valves that prevented you from opening a pressurized pot like they do now. As college students, assuredly they owned the oldest cookware you could find, including an unsafe pressure cooker.

As dinner time was fast approaching, the windows of the fishbowl, as their apartment was aptly nicknamed due to the large windows in the front room, were beginning to fog up, excitement was in the air, and the finishing touches of the meal were being, well, finished. My sister's roommate's brother was asked to see how the potatoes were doing. So he opened the pot to check, of course.

Well, he didn't exactly open the pot. It more opened itself, once he loosed the sealing mechanism without first releasing the pressure valve or running under cold water to lower the temperature. The immense pressure inside threw the lid off the pot in a grand explosion of hot water, steam, and potatoes. All eyes were on the budding engineer who had just finished taking a test to demonstrate his engineering knowledge, some questions of which undoubtedly covered such foundational concepts as the relationship between the pressure and temperature of liquids and gasses, possibly while keeping the volume constant.

A quick check and everyone was okay, with no major burns to report, and everyone's hearing quickly returned to normal. They were still finding potatoes in the kitchen for months afterwards. They were delicious.