Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Open University’ Category

I signed up for this a couple of weeks ago on the basis that it looked like a doable way of updating my skills a little bit in a fairly short time.

It’s part of the Certificate of Web Applications Development which is a series of six related 10 point courses. Normally 10 point courses offer you the chance to do the course over either eight weeks or about five months corresponding roughly to the workload of a 30 point or 10 point course but this one is over a fixed 12 week period which means that it should equate to a 20 point workload. In OU terms, a 20 point workload is around 5 hours a week so if my normal scaling factor applies it should take me a couple of hours a week to get through it.

Although it’s billed as an online course a parcel arrived this afternoon containing the book Principles of Web Design, a DVD full of all kinds of Internet software (Apache, several browsers) and a cute video, and the usual OU applications DVD. Going by my quick flick through the book it’s at a fairly low level although there’s an ebook for the course which may be at a higher level but I’ll not have access to that ’til Thursday. Supposedly you can do the course with Windows, Linux or Mac computers but installing it in Ubuntu didn’t work as seamlessly as that implies. In fact, it didn’t really work at all so I may have to break out the Windows machine at some point or maybe give it a spin in VirtualBox.

I came across a website from a former TT280 student which relates his experiences but also rather interestingly the falling number of students on the various courses in the certificate. Whilst TT280 kicked off with 800 students, towards the end the number dropped to well below 100 which I guess is why this is the last run of the course with no plans to replace it. I’m not sure if I’ll complete the certificate myself at this point as some of the modules will run through rather busy periods in my timetable so I’ve linked it to my open degree that I’m using as a place holder for my miscellaneous courses.

Up to now I’ve been using the Open University to study things not so much for pleasure but which would enable me to do other things for me or the family. Hence the Modern Languages degree grew out of a desire to move to France and the Child Psychology and Human Biology out of a desire to know some stuff that was useful for the family.

However, after considerable internal debate I’ve decided to go for TT280 which is the first of a set of six short courses spread over about two years that basically amount to a web design training course. Along the way it should update my computing knowledge in a whole host of areas from HTML through to Java and server performance. It’s probably one of the most general computing courses that they offer and seems like one of the best re-entry points into computing. In practical terms, if all goes according to plan, I may pick up some of the topics in more detail through other courses eg I don’t think it covers Java in much detail as there are three 30 point courses on Java and there are much larger courses on server technologies and whatnot.

Although it’s a university course, it seems to be run much more on the lines of a training course with quite a tight timetable in place of the normally more laid back OU timetables from other courses. I’ll be doing the first course (TT280) on its own for much of the 12 weeks but after that, if I do them, the other five courses will be running alongside courses already in my plan.

Usually university open days are held on the campus and you get to ask questions of some of the lecturers who you’ll meet should you take up the offer from the university.

However, the Open University doesn’t work like that as the lecturers are all based in Milton Keynes and outside of summer schools you won’t meet the people who actually produce the courses. What happens on an OU open day is that you get to see a whole bunch of specialist study advisers. Essentially there’s one person for each prospectus thus there’ll be someone for maths/computing, technology, art, science, etc. along with some more people able to deal with more general questions.

Thus it’s not necessarily as useful as it might be. Certainly it’s handy for fairly specific questions about the faculties but if you have a very specific question about a specific course you’ll get an answer if it’s a popular course but not necessarily if it’s one of the oddball ones. Having said that, the people there can put you in touch with someone who can answer questions about those oddball courses too so it’s handy in that respect.

The other problem is that the advisers tend not to know about what’s happening to specific courses outside what’s said on the website about those courses. So, for example, in the science field they’ll know that S204 (the main biology course) is being replaced by two 30 point courses and that one of these is starting in February 2012. What they won’t know is that it’s now looking possible that the second course will never appear (if the forum information is anything to go by).

In computing you’re constantly on a treadmill to keep up with the latest technologies.

That’s not so bad if your employer has been good enough to keep you on some kind of development programme but, of course, these days fewer employers are willing or able to afford to do that. Not only do they have the perennial problem that you might up sticks and move on right after an expensive training programme but there’s the added problem of financing it in these difficult economic times.

Usually these courses cost an absolute fortune so paying for them yourself isn’t an option. However, there are a number of more affordable versions of some of these around these days including fairly general ones like those on Java and Visual Basic through to rather more specific (and quickly dating) ones like Microsoft server technologies all for around £400 for a course running over nine months. Where you get into bigger bucks is in the networking courses with CISCO networking at £850 (albeit a rather larger course than the earlier ones) and Advanced routing at £1250.

Sadly the best all-rounder, a suite of six courses that make up the Certificate in Web Applications Development is just about to commence its final run. This was one of the experimental formats designed to be easily updated which seemingly wasn’t nearly so easy to update as anticipated (ie they probably lost a fortune on it). What’s interesting about this one is that whilst the later modules received a fair amount of criticism, the websites that the students produced are rather good.

With me changing tack towards biology/chemistry over the next few years I thought I’d see about getting up to speed with at least some of the upcoming courses by way of taking a related short course in advance.

It turns out there are quite a number of courses for which this can be done. So many in fact that I probably won’t be able to fit them all in over the time that’s available. Still, I’ll have a go when it is possible.

So, for the big S204 biology course there’s the S171 Empire of the microbes short course. Whilst it obviously doesn’t cover all the ground that the large course does, it should get me up to speed in some proper biology terminology.

Similarly, for the big S205 chemistry course and S377 there’s SK185 Molecules, medicines and drugs which is reawakening the memories of previous chemistry courses.

For the S366 evolution course a few years down the road there’s S193 Fossils and the history of life. Unfortunately that’s in its final presentation this November so I’m going to have to make a point of squeezing it in.

And so it goes on, with S173 Plants and people having a passing relationship with SXR375, the plants residential.

As well as introducing me to some terminology in advance of the corresponding main course this approach will add 10 points for each of the short courses which is 40 points just for the above and I’m sure more mini pre-courses will turn up over the next few years.