Yaargh. And with that, I promise no more complaining about OU system downtime. Until the next time it does it to me in the middle of a study session, anyway…

We all have broadband these days, just set up a students’ download page and save the money all those damn CD’s cost. Likewise, a PDF of the Electronic TMA guide would be plenty useful enough for those that need it – I have enough courses under my belt now that I need neither. With those gone, there would be no need for the mailing at all, thereby removing the need for packaging or postal costs. The OU’s been going on for a while about the need to control costs & raise student fees – well there’s a place to start on the cost-cutting that I doubt too many people would care about. It would even be environmentally-friendly.

There were a few CDs / DVDs in with the T214 mailing so I didn’t notice at first, but, praise the maker, there’s no Online Applications DVD – although with the retirement of First Class (bless its soul) and what I’ve taken as a strong hint that we should be using MS Office (the hint being the restrictions placed on TMA filetypes), there’s really nothing else that it could be used to distribute. But for me at least, it’s a welcome omission.

I have been busy with my OU studies in that time – M256 (Software Development with Java) and M364 (Fundamentals of Interaction Design) have both been done and dusted, and the study path to B33 (BSc(Hons) Computing and Systems Practice) is now down to just two courses: T214 (Understanding Systems: Making Sense of Complexity) and T306 (Managing Complexity: A Systems Approach).

T214 starts, well, today, with an opening block all around the “network of networks” that you’re using by reading this blog: the Internet. The course recommends posting a lot of activity work to the ‘net for reference and whatnot, so I’m figuring this will be as good a place to post as any – so you may find seemingly random posts appearing. That’ll be why.

But I’m also going to try and keep this updated with other thoughts on my OU studies, as I’d originally intended to when I set the blog up. After 16 completed modules in 5 years, I’ve seen some changes in the way the OU, so there’re plenty of things to talk about.

For now, though, I’ve got some set-book reading to do. Later!

While I’m complaining about M253… When I can get to the course calendar, it helpfully makes the above suggestions on what you should be doing this week. All of which rely on someone bothering to post the Milestone 2 document to the course website, and of course that’s noticeably not there. Very helpful. </snark>

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…

- Wrote to my MP for the first time over the ELQ funding issue – which affects me, as it would knock short courses on the head, along with the idea I’ve been toying with of doing a BSc(Hons) Physical Science once my current degree is out of the way. Positive reply form her, and she’s signed the Early Day Motion, so I’m fairly happy with that. For all the good it’ll do, knowing this Government…

- T224 complete & results are out – Pass 2, which I’m a little disappointed but not surprised about, as I was caught out by a number of exam questions around Block 3 of the course (Bluetooth, specifically). It doesn’t count towards my Honours classification, so I can live with it. More on that later…

- S199 – which I’ve complained about previously – ended up deferring to the January submission date. I ended up starting it from scratch again – fortunately, it’s made a lot more sense the second time around, so I’m a lot more confident about it now.

- M359 and S186 kick off in February. Since they overlap with the end of M257, it’s going to be a busy few months…

- …which will also coincide with the arrival of our 2nd child, due in June. So is the M257 exam. This could be a problem…

- along with all the OU stuff, I’ve also been taking work-related exams. I now hold Certified Ethical Hacker and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator certifications. If I ever get to use them, work’s going to get a lot more interesting…

Busy few months passed. Busier few months coming. One word: eek…

From the courses I’m doing, the Txxx & Mxxx courses are all full one-year units that involve real work – the Sxxx courses are the fun little 2-month fillers I do for personal interest and to keep my mind ticking over between units. Unless it’s S199, which is rapidly turning into a nightmare of global-warming proportions. ^^;

I can’t help but wonder: Why!? If you’re so past caring that you don’t even attempt a question, why bother turning up, as a no-show is the same as a nul-points in the end – and I can’t see the exam paper having been so scary to anyone that they couldn’t attempt anything.

One of those questions that’s destined to remain unanswered, but definitely made me curious…

• Assign a score of 0-4 to each Learning Objective, so that:
  • 0 = Not Achieved
  • 1 = Not Quite Achieved
  • 2 = Just Achieved
  • 3 = Achieved
  • 4 = Well Achieved
• Multiply out the number of Learning Outcomes tested by the course / ECA by 4, to get a maximum possible score.
• Tally up the points for each LO to give a total score
• Convert to a percentage to give yourself a meaningful result

So, using S194 as an example (as it’s what I have to hand) – the ECA paper lists 16 Learning Objectives that the paper tests. 16*4 = 64, so when I finally get the results I can go through the feedback and work out my total out of 64. (Total/64)*100 = a percentage score for the course.

As methods go, it’s a bit of a blunt instrument – it treats all LOs as equal, when in practice there should really be some weighting applied as some will be harder to prove than others – but as a rough-and-ready method to get a percentage score for comparison purposes & for self-motivation, it would work.

Although I’d much rather the OU did that for me.