Tuesday, April 26, 2011

OU - An Update

Well, no updates from me since January - but I'm not slacking - I'm just very busy! I'm just over halfway through S197 (which is a really interesting course, and has got me interested in taking this particle physics and cosmology stuff further ... one day), and I have also just reached the TMA01 stage on M362. In fact I submitted the TMA a couple of weeks ago and decided this morning to bring this blog up-to-date - and then found that my marked TMA had been returned this morning.

M362 has been interesting so far. Some of the ground that we have covered has been quite familiar to me, some of it less so, and the level of detail has been worthwhile (mainly because I like to really get to grips with stuff). The coding exercises have been fairly easy - although I'm expecting them to become more challenging as the course progresses, so that will be good. One or two of the TMA questions were a little wishy-washy - you know the thing - you read the question and then realise that it can be interpretted in a number of different ways, so half the problem is not figuring out how to answer the question but trying to figure out what the questioner was after. I guess that's level 3 for you.

Anyway, I read through the marked transcript this morning and found that I made a couple of stupid mistakes (careless oversight - seems to be a habit of mine), a part of one question that I managed to miss out (not the first time thats happened either!). But I still managed a very respectable 86% and I'm more than happy with that.

Biggest problem at present it trying to find the time to fit all the studying in. Work has become very busy over the last month and looks to be continuing that way (which is good), I'm helping my son revise for his Maths, Physics, and Chemistry GCSE's that are coming up, and we might be moving house this summer too. So, busy time.

I'll try and get another post in before the year ends!

1 comment:

Simon said...

Hi Simon,

It sounds like your having a time of it, I wouldn't want to factor planning a house move into my work and study life! Some of the most stressful times of your life all wrapped up into one. It looks as though your enjoying M362 and more so getting good grades, I found it a very interesting course although I didn't have your background so a lot of the material was new to me, some had been touched on at level 2.

I enjoyed the familiarity of programming as I know you do, which is why I'm finding M359 and M366 are taking me a lot more time than M362/M363 did to study. M366 is an extremely interesting course although there is a lot to take in and digest, I really think you would enjoy it so keep it in mind for the future.

I hope your sons exams go well, I'm sure if your helping him out with his revision he will be fine!

Simon

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