OpenMusings

S186 – Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis – is my latest foray into the Science Short Course collection. The course author is David Rothery – he was also responsible for S196 Planets: An Introduction, which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I have high hopes for this one. The subject’s a little off what I’d normally be interested in, but the OU are dangling the Certificate in Contemporary Science over my head. What can I say – I’m a sucker.

The main component of this one is another of Rothery’s books, Teach Yourself Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis (Get it here…), which is 296 pages of everything you need to know about volcanic & tectonic activity. Obviously, I haven’t read it yet, so the verdict on how good it is remains open – I’ll let you know in a month or two – but at first glance it looks good.

There’s also a hefty course book with additional materials and activities, and a DVD-ROM with a selection of video clips to back up the other materials. There actually seems to be quite a bit to the course – if you took the time to watch all the videos, you’d be doing terrible things to the time required to complete the course, I reckon – but the OU seems to have worked hard to give you everything needed to get the points taught by the course across.

So first impressions are good. The ECA result will be the true test of that, though…

Some new Science Short Courses are on the way, which may be of interest if you’re like me and can’t resist them. From a post by Audrey Brown (chair of a number of SSCs) in the SSC Course Choice forum on First Class:

SA188 Archaeology: the science of investigation – May 08
S189 Understanding the weather – September 08
S187 Elements of Forensic Science – November 08
S170 Darwin and Evolution – Feb 09
S171 Empire of the Microbes – May 09
S172 Olympic science – Nov 09

We have ideas for 2 new courses to start in 2010, so the first slot for another one will be in the second half of 2010. If you would like to suggest ideas for what that might be, then post them [in SSC Course Choice] and I will pass them on at the next appropriate meeting where we consider new topics.

Nothing there that immediately grabs my attention – I’m more a physics / astronomy nut – but there’s a decent range there.

M257-TMA04 is done, bar going through it for a ‘sanity check’ in a week or so – I tend to miss obvious problems if a read through an assignment too soon after completing it. This raises an interesting problem: once Unit 10 is out of the way, that’s M257 done & dusted – but the exam isn’t until June. So just how do I keep the information learnt since October in my head for another 5 months, without the constant kick that TMAs give you to learn things?

The idea was to get M257 finished before M359 began, and I’ve managed that. But it’s a bit of a double-edged sword – if I now bury myself in SQL, I’ll have forgotten all things Java by the time the exam comes around. So here’s the plan: just for once, I’ll be doing the optional, non-assessed Case Study units for M257, as just working through them should help keep things fresh in my head. I’ve also obtained all the M257 & M254 past papers that I can, and I’ll aim to do one of them a month until the exam – should also help me to identify the areas of the course that I skipped over a bit too quickly (I’ve been very lax on note-taking this time out, which may well come back to haunt me). Put all that together, and there should be enough Java work to keep me on course for a decent exam score without getting too much in the way of work on M359.

That’s the theory, anyway. I’ll tell you in August if it worked…

So I’m currently plugging away at TMA04 for M257. There’s something unique about programming questions that can be eternally infuriating – it’s quite possible to bang away at a question, or portion of one, for hours on end without making any progress before you get that little “ding!” of inspiration that lets you finish the task in 5 minutes.

Let’s take, for example, Q3(c). I started that at around 7pm on Tuesday evening. At 1am I finally gave up and went to bed – and had code fragments floating through my head, with one half on my brain still trying to puzzle out the question while the other tried desperately to get to sleep. Work on Wednesday involved several piles of scrap paper on the desk with little Java snippets scribbled down to try later. The solution finally arrived in my head, with an almost-audible “hallelujah!”, at around 8pm Wednesday evening. It’s now coded, screenshotted and safely in the solution document – but I’m fairly certain all that aggravation should be worth more than 19 marks.

Not the end of the story, sadly, as Q3(e) is now giving me the same problems. And that’s only worth 12 marks. Aargh.

Probably the only time I’ll ever see that, so I’m going to enjoy the feeling while it lasts.

After doing all the sums on what it would take to get a distinction on this one, it wasn’t to be:

There’s only so much studying you can do ahead of an exam, and there’s a certain sinking feeling you get when you revise a chunk of a block and then, come the exam, find that both questions relating to that block (Part A of the T224 paper has two questions per block) come from the parts you didn’t have time to do. I got that sinking feeling in this exam. Q5 & Q6 were the guilty questions (ISO7816 smartcards and Bluetooth SCO & ACL links, for the curious), worth a total of 16 marks. I was just 6 marks short of a Distinction – so guess where I likely lost those marks. I’m something of a perfectionist, so yes, frustration with myself was the emotion of the day – but at least this won’t count towards my Honours classification…

S199 is done & dusted, and I have to say I’ve never been so happy to see the back of the course. Initially the problem was just information not sinking in – taking a break for a while (and deferring to the 2nd ECA date as a result) and starting over again solved that problem, but then technical issues with the Student Visualisation Interface app that the OU provide nearly scuppered the whole thing. With an issue that left me unable to complete the ECA, I spent 3 weeks trying to get a solution out of the OU Computing Helpdesk and the course advisers, and drew a blank (OUCH aren’t interested unless it’s an installation problem, and the advisers were a tad.. relaxed.. when it came to replying to the query). Even allowing for the problem running over Christmas, that’s not really ideal.

In the end, I solved the issue myself and the ECA is now away – but the prospect of being unable to complete an ECA, and therefore failing the course, through no fault of my own has left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen again.