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Okay, so let’s try this again.

I didn’t anticipate either needing such a long break, or ever going back after the break turned into a long one. But I really miss studying. I don’t have the mental capacity I did three years ago, that feels gone forever. So I’m taking the advice of many visitors to the blog, and slowing things down. Just taking one 30-credit module a year for the next four should see me through, without too terribly much stress.

Things got insane with Covid. For the first year and a half, work was rough. Where I work, we had to observe every lockdown, keeping over a thousand people working remotely, and going through all the lockdowns wasn’t easy. Those lockdowns kept rolling through until December 2021. Just the sheer numbers of tools we went through is insane to think about.

2022 wasn’t too bad. I had a huge holiday at the end of it, and I was enjoying just working during the day and enjoying my free time in the evenings, and … being normal, I guess.

I’ve known I was itching to start studying again for a while. I didn’t want to start it up last year with the holiday I had planned. But I had to postpone it this year, too, for a couple of months. My job had to reduce the number of senior IT positions … The trouble being only my boss and I have senior IT positions. I basically had to interview against my boss for the remaining position. I didn’t want to be job hunting, then settling into a new job, and going back into study all at the same time.

Thankfully, I won’t need to be. I was successful in my bid for the position, so I think I can finally step back into my studies. I enrolled this morning. I’m extremely excited about the new AI module, but I didn’t see if it was a first presentation this year. I’ve sworn off first presentations. So that’ll happen next year. This year I’m trying again with TM357 Cisco Networking part 2.

If things go well with the AI module next year, though, I’m planning to use that for my cap-stone project at the end of Stage III. I’ve been spinning up a few language models (GPT-2, DialoGPT, and GODEL) on Google Colab, and playing a fair bit (like everybody else on the planet) with OpenAI’s API. I have an idea for long-term context memory using Pinecone DB (or another cloud-based vector database) for a chatbot, and there’s an interesting GitHub project I saw that uses a similar idea to consume your internal documentation to become an AI knowledgebase. Combining the two could make a super responsive helpdesk assistant, and I’m really excited about giving it a go.

Anyway. That’s my long-winded (as always) way to say: I’m back.

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Well, this year has ended in abject failure, and if I know myself, my degree study has ended the same way. It was a good run.

The university was offering much more lenience for assignment extensions this year, due to the pandemic. With my work crushing me due to overwhelming demands on IT while half of our staff were unable to work for medical reasons, I had little time for study, and needed one of those extensions for the first time since I started studying. Although tutors were given wide discretion in awarding extensions of up to 21 days, the catch is that you have to have a tutor who responds. And mine never did. A month later, he still hasn’t.

So that’s it. I’m throwing in the towel and walking away. If I’m not enrolled again by next autumn, I’ll shutter the site.

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I’ve done basically no studying this past month. There have been few days here and there, there’s been a tutorial or two (I honestly can’t remember if it was one or two), but mostly nothing.

I just can’t take the increased coronavirus-related stress from work, and not having alone time to recover from the stress. I took this whole week off to recover from stress, but because my entire family was under foot due to half-term, I had zero alone time, and my stress levels didn’t drop.

So I think I have to just call it. I don’t see how I can get through a year of uni without being able to send the kids to their grandparents’ house. That must make me sound like a monster, but that’s the amount of emotional energy I have.

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This year’s Get Ahead Early & Stay Ahead (my #1 advice for the OU) is restricted entirely to TM352: Web, Mobile and Cloud Technologies. (My other module this year, TM357: Cisco Networking (CCNA) Part 2, won’t have its Cisco NetAcad materials released until after I have a tutor in a few weeks.) And yet, I still caught myself asking if it was worth it to start early. It always is.

If TM352’s title of Web, Mobile and Cloud Technologies sounds a lot like TT284’s title of Web Technologies, there’s a reason for it. They’re strongly related modules that cover a lot of the same material, ostensibly at different levels. One of the things that got under my skin about TT284 was a lack of clarity about the differentiation of Cloud Architecture as it applied to systems infrastructure and program design. The module guide indicates there will be practical experience working with both this year, so that seems like a difficult aspect to repeat.

Another positive is that there are weeks set aside just for working on assignments. Assignments in TM352 have a strong practical component, so it can be extremely useful to have study time devoted to getting those practical portions working correctly. With any luck, it’ll help me if there are any rough patches in TM357, as well.

Mostly what I’ve been doing this month, though, is chatting away on the OU STEM Club Discord. Well, no, mostly lurking. About one in every twenty comments I make actually manages to get past my internal filter, so mostly I’m just reading. It’s been remarkably busy this month, but I’m told it will be a bit quieter soon. It’s been nice to be able to chat with others who are going through the same things I am, and has really enhanced the entire OU experience.

Anyway, I’ve managed to get my customary 2 weeks ahead, at least for the one module I can, so I’m going to go back and lurk. And maybe see some of you there.

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This is going up at least a month later than I wanted it to. But I’m just having difficulty figuring out what to say about TT284. That’s because there’s precious little to review.

I just didn’t feel like there was enough in this module to be considered a Stage 2 module. I don’t know if it’s because I already know and use a lot of the technologies the module references. Maybe it’s because I have my own practices for the planning and specification phases. Or it could be that it’s just light on content.

The module materials encourage students to interact by visiting the forums and writing about specified topics. This doesn’t actually garner any (well … much) diaglogue. It’s mostly just a graveyard for scraps of students’ notes. The best way I found to use this was to look for alternate viewpoints to my own, but spending my precious study time combing through poorly formed and poorly informed thoughts had a low return on investment.

What really did work for me was the assessment for the module. Assessments were split down the middle with practical activities and academic (or, rather, academic-dressed-up-as-vocational) reports. I really felt like it did a good job of allowing students show that they could both perform and understand the details from the module’s learning objectives. The feedback from my particular tutor was insightful and constructive.

The module doesn’t teach much, though. It exposes. It gives a whirlwind tour of web-building technologies, and approaches to designing web applications. There’s a whole lot of copy-and-pasting intended. You’d come out of this module knowing what you don’t know, which is a good starting point, but that feels more like a first stage module to me. In fact, that sort of seems like the intention of the web design portions of Harvard’s CS50, but you definitely learn more on that module. And that’s just a very small section of a free-to-all introductory course.

Of course, CS50 only teaches the practical, technical side of web design, and none of the design, specification, or non-technical details. It doesn’t cover wire frames, specification gathering, accessibility considerations. It only briefly considers architectures. But it’s also only a few weeks long.

I guess my bottom line for TT284 is that it’s just not advanced enough for Stage 2. It would be an ideal module in place of TM129 … Or maybe even just one of its three blocks.

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Since TM257 is kind of a non-module, a non-review seems appropriate. And the great thing for me is that a non-review seems like it should be rather quick to not write.

As stated many places, the content for TM257 comes from Cisco’s NetAcad course environment. It comprises NetAcad courses for CCNA R&S: Introduction to Networks and CCNA R&S: Routing and Switching Essentials. You read very, very dry web pages that are like a Flash website-book, check understanding through a variety of drag-and-drop exercises, a very poor syntax checker, and a very awesome virtual network lab called Packet Tracer. (Okay, so the UI for Packet Tracer needs some remedial attention, but its functionality is excellent.) There are glossary flash cards, quizzes, and chapter exams after each portion, and a “final” exam for each of the two constituent courses; one is taken at home, and one is taken at the day school when there isn’t a global pandemic.

NetAcad has all this as a lovely pre-packaged unit, and though dry, it’s very good. The pacing, the knowledge, the checking, the repeating, the practising … It’s a great package. But for it to be an Open University module, it needs more.

It needs learning outcomes. It needs summative assessment. It needs TMAs. And frankly, I’m not very keen on TM257 in this department. The learning outcomes aren’t what NetAcad designed their module to provide, but rather a combination of what it’s observed to provide, and to a degree what it’s hoped to provide. The module team has made it very difficult to compare notes, but it seems that the evaluation fit so poorly this year that possibly nobody scored a distinction-level percentage on one of the EMA questions, and possibly only a couple of people even scored above 70% on it. Which is more or less fine, but it’s less fine when the items being evaluated must have been informed by what was taught by someone else. Either the learning outcome doesn’t match the materials, or the evaluation doesn’t match the learning outcomes. Because it seems a fair stretch to think that the materials did teach what was in the learning outcomes, the learning outcomes were appropriately evaluated, and nobody lucked into a distinction-level answer. Especially when you consider how many certified industry practitioners were on the module.

I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I’m beginning to guess why it might be that we can’t get straight answers about how people did on that question.

Anyway, that aside, I suspect we’ll see similar numbers of people with distinctions this year as we did last year, and that seems to fit more or less with other Stage 2 modules. So, over all, in the broad view, it feels like the evaluation is in the right ball park.

So that’s kind of my evaluation of the module, too. It’s got dry materials, great information, and evaluation that’s more or less fine.

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I’ve been putting off a review of these modules because covering all three is a lot of work. And a great way to make that worse would be to split it into three different posts. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do. First up will be M269, with a breakdown of what’s encountered on the module, how I feel about the various sections, and then an overall reaction to the module.

Note that I’m not going to discuss actual programming here. M269 happens to use Python as its language of choice, but that’s just a vehicle to demonstrate algorithms. University is not the choice place to learn a progamming language, and the concepts in M269 are language-agnostic.

M269 starts by considering the concept of abstraction, and multiple ways it can be used in computing. This is excellent, and fills a major gap in M250 caused by the language choices employed by Java. It’s a gap that made M250 more difficult to study, so that might be a reason to consider taking the two simultaneously … But then you’d have two different programming-heavy modules using different languages, and that could prove confusing, especially come exam time. The conventional wisdom is to take M250 the year before M269, and I wouldn’t disagree with that.

From abstraction, it considers (abstract) data types. I think a lot of the instruction here implies without stating that there’s a natural link between the shape and definition of your data, and how you can use that data. It’s explored more explicitely in some MOOCs I’ve done, and it feels useful. Still, students who pay attention will find the connection. Using the data leads to solving problems (such as searching and sorting) using algorithms, and then evaluating between multiple useful algorithms. This provides the context for discussion of algorithm complexity. So far, so good. This is covered in many introductory-level computing MOOCs from other universities. Frankly, I didn’t find the OU model particularly compelling, aside from laying the foundations of abstraction. But it wasn’t much worse than other methods I’ve encountered, except that it’s rather dry. It’s not as fun or entertaining as MIT-OCW, HarvardX, or UBCx MOOCs, and contextless programming challenges (aside from the iCMAs) aren’t engaging as they’re encountered in the materials. On the other hand, I found the Big-O (being changed to Big-Ω for future presentations, and the module actually explains the difference) discussion more academic than I’d encountered, which I found really useful.

The module also covers formal logic, and it does this beautifully. My dad used to lament that Geometry was the closest that students got to formal logic in school, and thanks to computer science that’s no longer the case. The largest, gaping problem here is that there’s no feedback to students on this portion of the module. Along with computability, this is assessed only in the exam, and detailed feedback is unavailable. This does a disservice to students, but one that’s likely welcome to both the majority of students and tutors alike … It seems like a lot of work for everybody.

I never got a word from my tutor, aside from a bizarre marking on a TMA. The TMA asked for changes to an existing function, and I was able to get the job done without changing the inputs and outputs, which is essential in a multi-programmer environment. She criticised me for not making a completely different function which couldn’t be used as a replacement. Fair enough. But I was able to get help from other tutors, and the tutorials from these other tutors were always engaging and enlightening.

I think there’s a lot that M269 does right, but there’s a lot that freely available MOOCs do better at an introductory level … M269 was a bit basic for a second-stage module. It does some things, like formal logic, abstraction, and complexity, better than those MOOCs, but it’s not as engaging. And for an eight month module, engagement is critical. It’s a good and important module, but it could do with some fresh, colourful paint.

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Results have come in for the 2019/2020 academic year. This is a strange year for results, because they’re not necessarily based solely on the efforts of the students. For modules with cancelled exams (as opposed to those which substituted an EMA or did a home-exam alternative) students got an adjustment to their OCAS score in line with how module students have done on their OES relative to their OCAS over the last three years. As students typically do worse on their exams than on their coursework, in practice this means that students get a deduction of their OCAS based on previous years’ students.

It hasn’t been pretty. There are a lot of unhappy students, and some quite understandably so. Students of M250 are reporting deductions against their OCAS by as many as 10 marks, so you may have needed an OCAS of 95 to get a distinction. (Note that these figures are not verified, just social media chatter.)

My only module to fall into this category was M269. My OCAS was 95, and I got an adjustment down to 93.1 for my module result. Somebody else said a 5 mark difference cost them a distinction.

For TT284 and TM257, I had a standard EMA (with TM257 being informed by a very non-standard day school alternative). I didn’t do as well as I’d have liked on either (91 and 89 OES respectively) but I just couldn’t focus for anything in lock-down. And to paraphrase someone on the OU STEM Discord server, it reflects my effort level fairly.

Anyway, long story short, I’ll take three distinctions and run this year. It was never going to be easy doing three modules in the same year, so I’m grateful to have done it during a pandemic.

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With Student Finance England opening part-time applications today (as distance learning, all OU tuition is classified as part-time), I’ve completed enrolment and finance applications for next year. Normally, I’ve sailed past enrolment by March. Honestly, I’m impressed that I can fix myself a sandwich most days in lock down. This is positively high-functioning for me this year.

Next year will be the opposite of last year’s slog. It’s practically a cake walk. Except no cake at the end. Alright, I’ll probably have cake. And definitely rum. Anyway, I’m giving myself the easiest start to stage 3 study that I could. I’ll certainly be regretting that I said this by next February or March, but it might be the most relaxing year I’ve had since the lazy days of TU100.

Instead of the three module crush of last year, I’m back down to just two this year. And I’m only carrying on two of last year’s modules. I’m following up TT284 Web Technologies with MT352 Web, Mobile, and Cloud Technologies. I’m not great with web development, but I’m not awful. I imagine the mobile stuff will mostly involve converting web applications to mobile apps, with accessing phone I/O and environmental considerations thrown in. But it’s just a guess and I could be in for a rude awakening. As for cloud technologies, I used to build and deploy IAAS platforms, so I’m happy to get a more academic view of that. At least I’ll have plenty of practical context for the discussion. Based on some hints dropped in the TT284 materials, I’m also expecting to play a bit with SOAP and REST, and also JSON and more XML. All of which seems interesting, so clearly I’m missing something. (Okay, so it will mostly be report writing again, probably. So I get to whet my procrastination skills.)

I’m going from TM257 Cisco Networking (CCNA) Part 1 to TM357 Cisco Networking (CCNA) Part 2. This is really just the second half to what used to be a single 60 credit module, except the second half has been updated from V6 of the CCNA materials to V7. I’m not going to lie, TM257 was hard work, and there was a lot of it, but it was doable. In fact, the amount of confidence I got was not insignificant. Which has been something of a recurring theme with OU study.

And that’s it. Please don’t shake my obvious self-denial about the workload differential between stages 2 and 3. If I thought for one minute that two stage 3 modules might end up being tougher than three stage 2 modules, well … My lock-down-defeated self just probably couldn’t take it.

Good luck to everyone else gearing up for next year.

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I’m not overly enthusiastic on the portmanteau “Coronacation” as it implies that by working from home to keep ourselves and others safe during a pandemic, we’re not really working. We’re working. We’re pulling double time. There’s no longer any difference from our work and home lives, so work seems to intrude at all hours. Those who aren’t able to work are also working trying to get work. Plus we’re nearly all inadequate educators, now.

But I’m using the word differently, to describe trying to have a vacation from university while still in the latter part of the full (or nearly?) lockdown stage. I’m done with uni for this academic year! In fact, I submitted all my EMAs last week and have been recovering. And with three modules, I need a lot of recovering! I’m not ready to do full module reviews, yet, but figured I’d get this part out of the way.

I only gave myself a few days to do the TM257 EMA because it’s halfway done by the time the day school (or alternative thereof) is completed, and it’s in my wheelhouse, to boot. Mistake! Well, I mean, not a huge mistake. I got it done with a week to spare. But it was surprisingly tough.

The research question was shockingly broad. Like, people throw the phrase, “How long is a piece of string?” around, but imagine that was an actual exam question. Yeah. It was that broad. By the same token, though, it was great from both the perspective of learning networking details, and self-education. Regards to the module team, it was a top-notch question, and I enjoyed it. I also would still be in a blind panic over it if I hadn’t reached out to my very excellent tutor. I have never been so supported by a tutor as I was over that question.

The last question wasn’t difficult, but it fooled me! After I submitted it with some niggling questions at the back of my head, I was just gathering some documentation on the solution for my own notes, and something jumped out at me. My allegedly systematic approach had pole-vaulted over a step, and it would have cost me at least 4 marks and possibly a couple more.

All told, I’m happy with my submission, and am expecting somewhere in the neighbourhood of 84 to 97 marks on the EMA. The worst-case scenario is that I’m a border case.

(For the record, I finally figured out what I’d done wrong on the day school scenario. The question was written in an “okay” manner, it was really on my own shortsightedness that I missed it … And if it were me, I’d have deducted 4 marks instead of just 3.)

For TT284, the EMA was fairly straight-forward. The practical stuff was dead simple if you’ve done it before, and definitely doable if you hadn’t. In fact, if you can get an HTML form to work with a reference book beside you, you should do well on the EMA. The report side was mostly difficult in making choices; about what to discuss, which aspects to put forward, that sort of thing. In fact, I possibly didn’t answer the question for 1b, so I may resubmit that, but I did hit many points that an answer should have.

I feel I did somewhere between 86 and full marks on this one, but we’ll see.

Technically, I’m not quite on my Coronacation yet, as I’m going back now to look over M269 materials for units 6 and 7. On one hand, I’m glad I didn’t have the exam, because I don’t know how much time I would have had for primary study and revision this year. On the other … I’m really loving these blocks! I’m glad I’ve got a few months to catch up on them without deadlines, and can just enjoy the learning.

Within things that are in my control, my module results on M269 will be based entirely on our OCAS marks, but will not simply be our OCAS results. They’ll be applying an adjustment based on previous module cohorts’ exam results relative to their OCAS results. Regardless, I’d be surprised if I didn’t get a distinction from this module.

None of which matters! I’ve crunched the (fairly complex) numbers, and realised that so long as I get two distinctions at stage 3, nearly every path leads to the same degree classification. As long as I pass my three modules this year, it’s all the same in the end.