OpenMusings

M257 officially comes to an end on Wednesday, with its 3-hour exam on Wednesday morning. Normally I’d be looking forward a distinction – I love programming units, they’re right up my mental alley – but this time around it ain’t going to happen. Not because of lack of understanding – I’ve got an OCAS of 97.35% going into the exam, and it should’ve been higher bar a very inflexible marking scheme on some of the assignments – but I haven’t been able to give the course the attention it deserves. A combination of the dread M359 and the arrival of a new baby in the house a week ago have kept me from even looking at an M257 textbook since January. I’m planning to give the specimen paper a thorough going-over tomorrow, but that’s it as far as my revision for the exam goes – meaning that realistically, I’m looking at probably a Pass 3 at best. The perfectionist in me is screaming that this just won’t do, but unfortunately for him reality has other ideas.

On the bright side, the course doesn’t count in the Honours classification for BSc Computing and Systems Practice, which is the degree I’m working towards. The only slightly-related downside is that M359 does, and that could well be a trainwreck of note…

With T224 coming to an end, I’ve been playing around with Marx and the OU’s own Assessment Calculator to work out what I’ll potentially need to get a distinction on the course. With T224 not counting towards the honours calculation on the degree I’m working towards, the pass grade isn’t really important as such, but there’s a level of personal pride there that makes me want to the top grade. Start as you mean to go on, and all that.

I’m currently waiting on my mark from TMA04, but depending what I get there, the substitution system is throwing up some unusual vagaries that seem to flow from the different weightings on T224′s assignments (TMA01 15%, TMA02 30%, TMA03 30%, TMA04 25%) that could leave me needing a very specific mark on the exam (85%) to guarantee a distinction – any lower and the OES is below the threshold, any higher and the substitution score switches to a TMA with a different weighting and leaves me short on the OCAS. It’s all theoretical at the moment, but I’ll be looking into this a bit more once I have my TMA04 score, as I’d consider the possibility of getting a Distinction for scoring 85% in the exam, but a Pass 2 for scoring 86%, to be something of a glitch in the system…