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Something my nine-year-old self would be horrified to hear me utter: Will summer break just end, please?

In addition to being a part time OU student, I also work in education.  Well, okay, I work in a school.  I’m not sure it has much to do with education.  The point is, both my full time job and my part time studies shift considerably during the summer.

For work, I stop fixing small, day-to-day things, and start fixing enormous things that take months.  It’s normally fun, because I get to do a lot of research and learn a lot of things.  However, this summer I’m alone in my department for various reasons, so don’t have time to do any of the large projects, so we’ve outsourced them all.  I mostly keep things running in between looking over the shoulders of consultants.  It’s frustrating, but hopefully this will be the only year.  (Although we’re converting to an academy, so who knows what to expect next.)

For my studies, I transition to MOOCs of personal interest.  This year has been wonderful for that, because I’ve really come a long way both in terms of programming languages and programming design concepts.  But … It’s just small hobby stuff.  And I can’t get involved in big hobby stuff, because I don’t want it to overlap and eat into my OU studies.

Last summer by this time, there was an Introduction forum open, followed by course-specific early-bird forums.  I’m anticipating early-bird forums amost as much as my grandparents used to anticipate catching dinner at Sizzler at 3 PM.  I hope they still have them.  (The early-bird forums, not the early-bird dinner special.  Though if Sizzler’s around when I retire, I’m definitely down for dinners before the school run.)  It seems like a good way to gel the nation-wide footprint of students for the presentation before splitting us off into tutor groups, so that we can bond and feel more comfortable in the FB groups.

But really, I just want to get stuck in again and be studying properly.  My poor nine-year-old self would have fainted by now.

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Course Title: CS50 Introduction to Computer Science
Provider: Harvard via edX
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: 10 – 20 hours per problem set, 9 problem sets and a final, self-paced
Prerequisites: None
Completion awards: Verified Certificate available for USD$90

About the course:
A lot of people view this course as the gold standard in introductory computer science MOOCs.  Having been through it now, I’m afraid I have to disagree.  It is an amazing course, though, and the one best placed to get you into the middle of useful coding as quickly as possible.

The structure of the course follows what you might expect of a university course translated to an online MOOC: each week has a very, very long lecture, followed by shorter bits from teaching assistants highlighting important concepts, and then there’s a problem set which is a series of challenges which ostensibly can be solved using the techniques introduced that week.  There is an exponential increase in difficulty from week to week, because both the material covered is more difficult, and the amount of documentation relating to solving the challenges is reduced.  This is meant to foster habits of independent study to resolve such challenges in the future.

This structure is the first relative weakness of the course.  (Relative to the MIT CS introduction course using Python.)  The MIT course imagines education looking more like the web.  The Harvard course spends countless resources trying to make the web ape its own institution.

As a former trainer, the most important thing about educating people is keeping them awake and interested long enough to learn, so it’s really about entertaining.  The lecturer, Professor David Malan, is extremely entertaining on stage.  The format is fundamentally outdated, however.  There could be a hundred clips where there’s currently a 105 minute video, each collated, indexed, and cross-referenced.  A build-your-own lecture series could take the place of an impending Sander’s Hall nap.  MIT did this beautifully in their latest foray into CS as a MOOC.

The languages “taught” are fantastic.  They start by giving a few rules-of-thumb in Scratch, and pretend that they’ve therefore taught it.  They next spend several weeks on C, and this is an impressive tutorial for the language … for any language.  They then give a small grounding in Python, and then a cheat sheet for SQL, JavaScript, and maybe a few others.  Really, I think they’d do better by having a hard limit on two languages, because everything beyond Python was literally worse than having no experience at all.  Students are expected to meaningfully interact with those other languages, without sufficient preparation.  In solving PSets, students already know those topics, or they luck into trying the correct technique the first time, or they end up chasing their own tails for hours and hours before giving up and asking on a public forum for help.  I spent many hours answering questions in the CS50 subreddit to alleviate some of the pain of such students.  (An example is that they expect students to use object-oriented programming techniques, but never discuss what an object is, let alone what object-oriented programming is.)

I would disagree that it is an introductory module.  It may be introductory if you’re on campus at Harvard, and can stop in and chat to a staff member for twenty minutes, and you’re literally spreading this across a third of a year.  If you’re doing this on your own, you’re going to have to come with a pretty strong intuition of why computer programs don’t do what you expect, and how to troubleshoot to figure out where it all went a bit wrong.  (The tool created to understand this in C is fantastic.  Because of this, they don’t teach how to figure out how to do it when learning C, and therefore students have no concept of basic troubleshooting techniques once the module moves away from C and that tool is no longer available.)

If you survive through to the victory lap of the final (which is really just whatever personal project you want to make a video for), you’ll be ready to take on any formal CS education.  I doubt you’ll be prepared for properly undertaking independent study, however, because the theory behind the coding is often ignored.

The real time I put into this was between 4 and 12 hours per PSet (typically on the lower side), so maybe 60 hours, plus another two hours each “week” watching lectures.

I’d recommend people interested in CS and coding take this module … but only if they also undertake the MIT or UBC introductory modules.

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This is just an update on my last post about maths prep for OU’s MST124 module.  Altogether I’ve given it about two and a half weeks of study and revision, and I feel completely confident with my level of maths going into MST124.

I think my breakthrough occurred when I decided that I probably should stop trying complex equations in my head or doodling on my screen with the mouse.  It was when I pulled out a pad of paper and a pen that it all slotted into place, and it turned out my brain hadn’t completely liquefied in the several decades since I’d left school; It was just super lazy.  Not a shocking realisation, then.

So I’m nearly back up to the level I was when I dropped out of high school, with exponential and logarithm manipulation added to my tool belt.  (Learning logarithms was way cool, but the Khan Academy model wasn’t set out in the most logical order.  It took going back to the beginning after I’d gotten halfway through and learned bits and pieces from other sites.)

I went back onto the OU’s Maths Choices MST124 diagnostic Are You Ready quiz last night, and this time ran away with full marks in less than 15 minutes.  A dramatic increase on the 40-something minutes it took last year for 70- or 80-something percent.  Still, that’s simply being able to crunch the numbers.  If they were to throw words like “justify” or “explain” I’d be reduced to the sludge in the bottom of my vegetable “crisper” in no time.  So I still have plenty to do this summer in terms of getting proofs down and maybe skipping a bit ahead so I’m not taken off guard.

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When deciding between the MU123 and MST124 maths modules for my degree, I put a fair amount of weight on the diagnostic “Are you ready?” quiz for MST124.  It said my results were good, there were a few areas I should brush up on, but overall I should be just fine on it.

I won’t start the module until 7 October, so I’ll have to wait until then before I throw their pants doused with lighter fluid onto a telephone wire and chanting, “Burn, liar!  Burn!”

I just don’t know how prepared I really am.  See, the OU have opened up a “revise and refresh” website for MST124.  It’s amazing that they even do that.  It has diagnostic quizzes with typical questions one might encounter on various MU123 blocks.  Depending on how well you do on that, they have some cheat sheets for reminding you how to solve certain problems.  (It keeps referring me to read blocks from MU123 … Uh … probably not worth it to buy the books on eBay.)

When I do those, I perform a bit better than I did on the MST124 AYR quiz.  I note my weak areas, I study the sheets, and I do better.  But it kept feeling like it was only checking a very, very narrow section of maths at that level.

So I went to my original plan for MST124 preparation: Khan Academy!  (I can’t say enough good things about this site.  My older son enjoys it about as much as he enjoys Roblox.)  I’ve been working over there for about a week, now, shoring up as many weak spots as I can find, but that list keeps getting longer, and longer, and longer.  The site can hone in on your weaknesses the way painkiller commercials claim their product can.  And the areas of study can be very, very specific.  Like … “Sinusoidal models word problems“.  I have to decipher it before I can decide whether or not I know it and/or need it.  (I apparently do know it.  But good luck ever getting me to recognise it.)

They’re not that difficult to study, it’s just that there’s SO MANY OF THEM!  I’ve “mastered” something like 650 identified skills, and have more than 500 to go.  Granted, that’s for all the maths they can currently teach and evaluate on Khan Academy.  I won’t need anywhere near all of them by the time I start MST124.  But the skills can sometimes take an entire night.  I’ve got a hundred and thirtysomeodd days until the module starts, and a lot of those are on holiday.  In a lot of ways, the pre-study preparation feels harder than TU100 was.

Unlike TU100, though, I’m learning tons, not just practising.  And the practise is definitely necessary to get me into fighting shape again for the module.  And more practise.  And some more.  And it’s also fun.  But that part isn’t different from TU100.  I’ve really enjoyed my journey so far.

I won’t know until after I’m in the middle of it which was better for preparation: The OU MST124 preparation site, designed specifically for it, or Khan Academy, which is pretty much drinking from the fire hose.  Or Niagara Falls.  We’ll see how it goes.

One final bit for today: Results for TU100 will be in on 19 July.  My tutor will give us a cheeky heads-up if we passed or not before that, but nothing more.

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With my (first draft) final assignment in the can long ago and myself recovered, I can put TU100 firmly in my rearview mirror, much like a fox run over when you’re late for the airport.  I only have to talk about it again when I get my results, which will take a while.  How did I do on my de facto EMA?  Well, let’s take a look at what it covers:

  • A four page report on concepts relating nominally to “appropriate technology” for different socioeconomic landscapes, but in reality it’s … any report ever.  I’ve definitely nailed the structure, speaking to the right audience, defining my terms, and referencing.  But it’s arbitrary and my confidence lacks any justifiable source.  In a worst-case scenario, I could lose 10 out of 30 marks, but realistically probably 5.
  • A 200 word snip from a job application cover letter.  These are essentially free points, so I’m expecting the full 10 marks, but maybe 8.
  • Sense activity, full 50 marks, ‘nough said.
  • Understanding and normalising relational databases.  The technical side of this I’m very confident with, so this is more about my ability to describe the process, and present information in an appropriate form (in this case some tables).  I’ve defined every technical term within an inch of its life.  Maybe I’ve missed something and I’ll miss 2 of the 21 marks available.
  • A task involving understanding the Data Protection Act 1998, and security and encryption.  This task is possibly the best marriage of its explicit and implicit goals, as the explicit goals mentioned are highly relevant, and the implicit goals of tailoring your message to your audience appear to be equally weighted.  I’m again unduly confident here, but we’ll hedge another 2 out of 19 marks available.
  • A page of maths and the creation of a spreadsheet, full 40 marks.
  • Argument mapping.  This one’s difficult, as there’s lots of moving parts.  There’s logic, there’s reading comprehension, there’s technical detailing … It’s specifically stated that there’s no one answer, but that’s whatever the nice version of a lie is.  A fib?  It’s a fib.  The structure and progression of the questions give the game away.  The worst part is that we’re analysing what appears to be an Italian text that’s been run through Google Translate.  I re-did this portion completely three times, so I’m not excessively proud of my chances.  Maybe 25 out of 30 marks.
  • Risk analysis and the data security CIA triad (mentioned briefly in a MOOC review roundup).  So here’s the problem: I think this one is really about presenting information in an easy to understand format.  I’ve therefore shot for the moon on this one and presented it in a non-standard but easy-to-understand format.  This could backfire like a Chevy in winter.  Worst case is maybe 6 out of 10 marks.  On the other hand, I love the irony of taking an unnecessary risk in a task about risk analysis, so I’m not changing it.

This leaves 185 marks in a worst-case scenario from 210 non-skills marks.  That’s 88%.  If we assume that I do similarly dismally on the 40 skills marks (which would be 35), that’s still comfortably in the distinction range.  How likely is my worst case scenario?  Unlikely.  Realistically, I would mark it at 93-95%.

So how do I feel about TU100?  I don’t feel overwhelmingly like it was a waste of my time, but it’s a waste of money.  That much outdated and poorly constructed material is worth maybe £500.  I had a good tutor and good support from other tutors, but not really in line with the amount of money which was spent.  It did, however, give me an excellent chance to practise my skills.  And remind me how much I hate group tasks.  It’s for the best that it’s coming to an end, and I hope they A) pull the plug on Sense, and B) stop telling people not to take Scratch courses ahead of the module if they use Scratch going forward.

And studying at the Open University?  It’s brilliant.  It’s perfectly suited to my lifestyle.  I’m glad I’m taking it slowly, as I hit quite a few personal challenges and had to keep scaling things back over and over, but I was consistently able to keep up with the work.  I’m quite happy with the study prep I did, as it worked well.  I know the rest will be harder than this year, but I’m really looking forward to the next short five years.

Onto the greener pastures of TM129 and MST124, part-time student finance loans for the next academic year opened sometime in the last few days, so that’s sorted.  Much quicker this year than last in many ways.

And that brings me to … The first year of this blog being complete!  And I’ve written a lot.  I have no idea of what I’ll write about during the summer this year, but I’ll find something to keep me busy and learning.  Certainly I’m going to tackle as much of maths as I can before MST124, and somehow I don’t think that OpenLearn is going to be of much help.

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I’ve heard it said that uni students don’t have opinions, only references.  I’m already starting to feel that.

My last TMA came back marked this morning, just as I finished off my second draft for TMA03.  (I gave it an early submission just in case something happens and I forget to submit my final draft later.)  The last one had its own share of references, which I did by hand, and it took me ages to get them formatted correctly into the OU’s particular flavour of the Harvard referencing model.  This time, the references section was literally the largest portion of my TMA, and there’s no way I could do it without quitting my job and saying goodbye to my children for a few months a year.  Enter reference management software.

On one of the multi-module Facebook groups I’m in, someone asked what reference software everybody used.  I had no idea what they were even talking about, so was very interested in the discussion.  Somebody mentioned that they used CiteThisForMe, so I gave it a look.  It was like Christmas, but if you had super boring parents.

Different reference management software packages have different functionality, but in general they try to identify a source (typically by being fed a URL or by clicking a browser plug-in button when on a cited page) and extract information from that source.  This includes things like the author’s name, the date of publication, journal titles, volume numbers, etc.  It then plugs that information into a template for your desired reference model, either letting you copy-and-paste it, or inserting it for you with a word processor plug-in.

I tested CiteThisForMe with a reference I’d done for my last TMA, which took me three or four minutes to write with the OU Library’s help page up on the Harvard referencing FAQs.  It took a single cut and paste of a URL!  Everything was more or less correct, but the formatting was slightly wrong.  That’s when I noticed that I could refine the Harvard reference to Harvard referencing for Open University.  Sadly, it still wasn’t quite perfect, as it had formatting for a previous year.

I soon discovered that most reference management software get their formats from an open source program called BibTeX.  BibTeX itself is hard to use, but other fantastically easy tools make use of it as a resource.  Not all tools kept their formats updated regularly, though.

I tried out a few other tools, and was happy using RefME for a few days before I was approached by the head of an academic institution asking for assistance in assessing and choosing a reference managagement tool.  Coincidentally, she had also recently been exposed to them for the first time, and wanted to know how the one she saw, Zotero, stacked up to the rest of the field.

In her case, Zotero turned out to be the best fit due to its browser plugins, Word plugins, and ease of use.  If I had my summer of pre-uni study prep back, though, I’d heavily invest time into figuring out how to make Docear work for me.  It’s an entire suite for academic writing, and in addition to a decent (if slightly unweildy) reference management tool, it also includes things like mind mapping, PDF annotating, and other things.  For many, it would be perfect for the TMA notes document of my last post.

You can’t just leave your references to the software.  They get the references slightly wrong often enough that you have to go over each one and tweak them.  But it takes a three or four minute job down to just half a minute.  That makes a large difference when you’re writing a TMA and cycle between eight web sources before finally deciding on two and tossing the other six away.  After you’ve already re-written that section four times.

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Course Title: 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
Provider: MIT via edX
Price: Free
Level: Introductory
Effort: 15 hours per week, 9 weeks (really 8 weeks and 1 day) — about 120 hours
Prerequisites: Basic algebra, aptitude for mathematics, prior coding experience helpful
Completion awards: Verified Certificate ($49) with at least 55% course marks, and 3 credits “Academic credit” through Charter Oak State College (65% course marks and $100 in addition to the verified certificate)

About the course:
This course is heavy on the “Introduction” and “programming using Python” portions of its title, and somewhat lighter on the “computer science” section, but it does a credible job of each.

It dovetails beautifully with the Systematic Program Design series I reviewed a few months back.  On one hand, this course gives object-oriented context to the basic principles in the SPD course, and provides a great roadmap of what’s next.  On the other, the SPD course fills in a lot of the data structure and raw theory gaps in the MITx intro course, as well as showing recursive design in a much more powerful light.  Taken together, they really feel like solid first steps into really understanding what’s going on under the hood, and how to direct the processes.

This edX course is an updated and platform-specific version of the MIT Open Courseware teachings on the same topic.  I flipped back and forth between the 2011 version and this one for at least half of the course, so some of the specifics I remember may actually be from the OCW course.  It’s difficult to choose a favourite lecturer between Profs. Grimson and Guttag; they both present the lectures with humour and clarity that’s easy to follow.  The bite-sized pieces of the edX course are generally better, but the poor “finger exercise” knowledge checks count against it.

To help students gauge their comprehension of the material, these finger exercises are interspersed between lecture segments.  Often, though, it seems like they’re just there to make busy work, as they’re not checking knowledge that’s useful, they’re just exercises that test nothing so much as your patience.  The worst of these are when they test concepts not in the lectures, which is defended by the TAs as inspiring independent study.  This excuse is somewhat undercut by the text on some finger exercises which states not to get too frustrated with a concept, as it’s explained in a later lecture.  If it’s explained later, then clearly that’s where we’re supposed to learn it, not through independent study, or they wouldn’t ever explain it.

There are so many concepts taught (well) through this course, I really can’t pull out a list.  In general, there’s a lot of coding principles, such as operators and operands, expressions, variables, calls, specific data structures, loops, recursion, conditionals, etc.  Discussion of address pointing supports lessons on mutability and cloning. Functions and objects, heirarchies.  There’s a fair bit to do with abstraction, though I feel this is handled better in SPD.  On the other hand, this course did a much better job of exploring algorithm complexity and costs.

Among the most useful (to me) portions of the course were the problem sets.  These were typically program problems you were let loose on to solve however you wish. Well, that’s how it was on the OCW version of the course.  In the edX version, which grades your programs and therefore has a very narrow interpretation of success, you mostly had to solve the problems how they wished.  It was really frustrating after the freedom of the OCW problem sets, especially when the same problem sets from one couldn’t be used on the other, and one case where the accepted solution technically required a different answer than what the problem description requested.

The required time for this course is way off.  First of all, this is not a self-paced course, and each “week” is released serially.  However, though it takes eight weeks before the content is all dished out, there’s really only six and a half weeks of content.  There’s a two week break between the third and fourth week releases, and the midterm exam is then inserted AFTER the fourth week begins, so it’s not to allow time for that.  Then the last week and a half are likewise empty of content, aside from the final exam.  (The final half week isn’t really useful, feels tacked on to advertise the next course, and falls well short of the OpenLearn data science introductions.)

The time you spend is then split three ways: Time watching the lectures and doing the exercises, time doing the problem sets, and time researching and revising.  If all the problem sets were written lucidly, I’d estimate about 10 hours per week, or about 65 hours.  Poor writing on the problem sets (similar to the above issues with poorly written finger exercises, but with an emphasis on the required solution differing from the requested solution) probably expand it to roughly 12 hours per week, or around 80 hours.  This is very close to the 50 to 80 hours of the SPD course, but I feel the SPD course is more informative of computer science, and less frustrating.

I think if I had it to do over, I’d do the OCW version instead of the edX version, just because it’s easier to evaluate my progress on my own than to have a computer do it.  Oh, the irony.

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As some have said in my TU100 forums, it’s my last week of freedom!  After this, it’s all deadlines and regret.  (Which isn’t a huge lateral step, as it would have been mostly regret if I hadn’t started the degree.)

Before the big start, let’s take stock: Where am I?  Well, mostly I’m done.  Okay, not with the whole module, but I’m on track to being finished with the first block (of six) before the first day of the module.  In a word, that’s terrible!  For oh so many reasons:

  • I honestly didn’t want to get very far ahead.  I was thinking that being about a week ahead would help me smooth out any emergencies that came up.  (I’ve got a wife with a medical condition that sees me in A&E for about twenty hours a year, typically on a Friday night, doing my best to worry more about her being doubled over in pain than laughing at the drunks who can’t keep from sliding out of their chairs, I’ve got a baby who wants to practice parkour before he can walk, and a six-year-old who very commonly needs emergency snuggles.  Unavoidables happen.)
  • I’m kind of running out of things to study.  Problems worth having, right?  But my study habits have proven effective, so the last thing I wanted to do was to destroy them by letting up.  I might not be able to find this steam again for this module if I take my foot off the … Petrol?  Do you guys even have that saying over here?  I’ll settle with accelerator.  I didn’t want to take my foot off the accelerator.  I don’t know how that makes it steam, but that’s what I don’t want to run out of, so acceleratoring it is.
  • What happens if I actually do run out of things?  If I’m “done” by, say, February, but there are little bits and pieces that aren’t available until May, how will I find the motivation to go back and do them?  For example, TMA02 requires you to use TMA01’s tutor feedback.  So before I can put TMA02’s first draft down, I have to have submitted TMA01, waited for its deadline to pass, wait for it to be assessed and marked, and then I can start it.  And then draft, draft again, and then maybe a draft or two.  And then draft.  And finally submit TMA02.  And then wish I’d given it a few more drafts.  But all the material for it will be ages out of mind again.

And keep in mind, all of this is while doing other computer science MOOCs on the side.  Those ones, in fairness, I’m not really giving my full attention.  I’m watching the lectures, I’m doing the activities and exercises, I’m handing in the assessments, but I’m not taking notes, doing extra reading, researching questions I have, or studying them, I’m just doing them.  Like high school.  Just showing up and doing what I’m told.  (I have a nagging feeling that didn’t turn out so well …)

So one solution I’m thinking of is increasing my study intensity.  Which one do I worry about more?  Burning out by taking on too much, or losing interest by getting bored with insufficient materials?

I have a feeling in a few years I’m going to think back on this decision quite wistfully, that my biggest study problem was not having enough to study.

Okay, then, what have I done?

Block one is allegedly about “Myself” in relation to a digital world.  I don’t recall reading anything about me, really.  I may have missed it.  I haven’t been asked my opinion on much, either, except how much more awesome the writing skills of teenagers have become due to digital technologies.  (Err …)

The first part is allegedly about making students aware of the digital nature of our world around them, but is really about making sure we can simultaneously read and think.  Go me!

The second part is allegedly about the history of computers from a curiously narrow context: The four generations of computer hardware, spanning their entire history … From the mid 1940’s to the late 1970’s.  (Also some maths about exponential growth and binary counting.) Really the second part is about taking notes.  (Mental note: NEVER AGAIN WITH THE SPRAY DIAGRAM! IT IS THE DEVIL!) (Mental notes are not covered in this part.)

The third part is allegedly about HTML and markup, but is actually about … Well, no.  It’s actually about HTML and markup.  Well done, guys.  (It also has a critical process for evaluating sources.)

The fourth part is allegedly about how digital communications technologies make the world smaller, but is really about forcing you to play with a terribly dated Java applet that someone is waaaaaay too proud of, that basically amounts to a graphical TraceRT and a minor security violation all in one!  Yay!  (There are other and better tools.  Good luck to all the tutors who have to fight with students to disable their Java security settings!)  There’s a very (very) bad primer on TCP/IP, as well.

The fifth part is part of the programming guide.  The less said about this here, the better.  I’m not a fan.

And the sixth part is … Well, I’m supposed to find out tonight.  It’s allegedly about wireless and mobile networking, but is probably really about … Iunno, maybe someone’s recipe for guacamole.  It’s hard to keep track.

I’ll have to write more about the programming guide tomorrow.  As this is the second-to-last presentation of this module, it won’t really benefit anybody, but my recommendation is to skip it and study a children’s Scratch MOOC, instead.  (See previous blog entries.)

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While the TU100 module doesn’t actually start for nearly three weeks, I’ve gotten a fair head-start on it, so that I could learn more about how I’m currently learning.  The Good Study Guide hits the concept of self-evaluation quite hard, and I agree with it.  Six years is a long time, there’s an enormous amount of work ahead, and I want to give myself the best possible chance.

One problem I have with this is that once I start, I’m finding it difficult to put down.  First of all, it’s fun. I really enjoy this limbo of structured independent study.  Second, I’m desirous to prove to myself that I can make this a habit, and stick with it.  I find myself making excuses so that I start working as soon as the children go to bed so that it becomes second nature to me. (For example, last night I spent ALL my down-time in the kitchen, but with the door open so I could still share snarky comments about the TV with my wife, and didn’t even realise I hadn’t had any relaxation time.)  So the end result is that I’m a good deal further ahead than I’d really wanted to be.

I’d finished Block 1, Part 1 (‘Parts’ seem intended to basically take a week) after a few days.  I’m now in the middle of Part 2, but have also already completed my first TMA.  So that people understand what I mean when I say ‘finished’ a part or session, I thought maybe I’d describe some of the techniques I’m putting into effect so far.

I have difficulty concentrating while reading text, and I don’t think I’m alone there.  I can read the same passage of text about a dozen times without concentrating well enough to absorb any meaning, or even remember what I’d just read.  The most useful active learning technique that I’ve found to counter this is taking notes while reading.  Basically, it just makes sure that my brain engages in comprehension at every thought along my reading.

I use a 10″ tablet to flip open to my reading material (so far in e-books), then go online with my laptop to fire up OneNote Online to take notes in the cloud.  My notes then progress paragraph-by-paragraph, because I often find that doing so retains the clustered ideas found in each paragraph, and linking from paragraph to paragraph serially helps the flow of my notes.  (I said this much more succinctly in my TMA, and may be back to edit this section after the TMAs are marked, but I’m leaving my exact words out in case someone else subconsciously uses similar wording on their TMA and it triggers the OU’s anti-collusion software.)  I then write out a simplified bullet-point outline of the text.  So by the time I get done with a section of reading, I’ve re-written that section with a handful of words.

Then when I need to revise, I can read just my notes, which bring up the memories I associated when taking the notes, and I retrieve the entire meaning in a fraction of the time.  So how much writing am I doing, and how much time am I saving during revision?  Good question.  Let me check my numbers.

TU100 My Digital Life Block 1 Part 1 is roughly 14,000 words long.  Reading all of that and taking notes on it took approximately 6 hours (including activities), and condensed it down to roughly 3000 words (not including activities).  3000 words may seem like a lot, but I can barely keep birthday cards down to 3000 words.  (Imagine how I feel when a TMA says I have 200 words to say something!)

But that’s an excellent example that I have to do better.  I’ve cut down what I’m reading a lot, but 1 in 5 words still leaves a loooot of words behind.  On the other hand, it doesn’t take me much time to type the words, and the result is that I can recall them and their meaning very easily.  It might take MORE time to try increasing brevity beyond what I’m already doing.  If retyping every word would help me learn the information better (which, it won’t) I’d probably do it.

On a completely separate note, I’m also concurrently doing the MIT Introduction to Computer Science & Programming Using Python course on edX.  I really want to complete the entire course, but worried that I wouldn’t have enough time for both that course and my actual university course.  But it seems I needn’t have worried.  The MIT course takes about a night of my time a week, and the TU100 stuff (so far) takes about 4.  But we’ll see, as they’re both likely to ramp up.  As it stands, though, I could stop working on TU100 entirely until a week and a half before the end of the MIT course before I had to do any more work.

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The module website opened two days ago, and wow, what a difference between expectations and reality.

Although the OU website feels cobbled-together from a lot of different initiatives over the last several years, the individual componant parts are usually quite high quality.  For example, the OU online library is a thing of absolute beauty.  The ease with which I can come up with nearly any peer-reviewed study is astonishing.  (Not to mention so interesting that I’m seriously looking at the cost of 10-credit modules to retain access to it after I finish my degree.)

The module website for TU100 is likewise high quality.  Though some things are a bit difficult to find (normally because something has been renamed since directions to it were created), it’s over-all a great way to organise the huge amounts of data I’m going to have to assimilate this year.

The best news is that I don’t have to wait for any of my materials to arrive before my soft start.  All texts are available online, as well as nearly every other resource.  There are only two things that are not entirely available online: the SenseBoard itself, and some full-length TV episodes from an OU/BBC collaboration.  The Sense software, however, has a virtual SenseBoard so that the actual one isn’t strictly necessary, and there are clips of the TV episodes relevant to our studies online.  I could do the entire module with what’s available now.

The module site is broken down into three columns: Assessment and Support information, the planner, and resources.

The most important of these is the planner.  It defaults to showing 5 weeks ahead, but can also show the entire module, broken down into a week-by-week guideline of what to study when.  In addition to being a to-do list, it also has tick-boxes to track your progress, and links directly to the relevant resource for each step.

The assessment and support information column has the names, due dates, and results for the various types of assessment: TMA (Tutor Marked Assignment) and iCMA (Interactive Computer Marked Assignment) are the only two for TU100, but TMA6 is also an EMA (End of Module Assignment).  Contact information for your Tutor (and tutorials information) or Student Services is also displayed.

The final resources column is almost as invaluable as the planner.  It has any news relevant to the module, discussion forums, and then links to pages where resources have been grouped by type or use.  So what’s a resource?  It could be an online or eReader book, a diagram, a questionairre, a hand-out, software download, or basically anything else you need to get your module done.  Obviously as one of the things we’ll be studying is the Internet and accessing things there, you’ll have to visit other sites for that, but otherwise, it’s a great self-contained collection of information.  It almost wouldn’t require you to leave the site to complete the module if it wasn’t specifically teaching you about other parts of the Internet.

Also, I found out that my materials were shipped out yesterday, so even though I don’t technically need them, they should be here shortly.