Ha

>Yup, these are definitely the boys to go to if you want to learn how to make great software.

I find that you can pick that up as you go along. I fully expect to know everything and be perfect the day after I retire :)

In the Trenches

Speaking as someone stuck about halfway through the entire ordeal - thank you!

It puts the whole 'WTF are they talking about' SAQ into perspective (M882 I'm glaring at you).

Nick

Open or shut?

Do they still insist M$ is the one and only true software as they did a few years ago ?

Open software didn't get a look in on my geology course. The only software support they would give me was "Well use a M$ PC at the local library". Ironic given the name of the institution.

Ahhhhhhhhh brings back happy memories

and the bad ones 3 years of vodka based therapy failed to erase

Can always remember 1 OU course, 5 hulking great textbooks, a book of practical stuff, a flashy light gizmo you plugged into your serial port.

And what did 10% of the exam mark depend on... knowing 1 poxy page of Java in all that lot.

Spot on, Miss Verity

So, not much change in the 6+ years since I suffered through the same courses then.

Are you going to do a dissertation to make it into an MSc? No programming required there either, just 30-50K discussion of why software application X is not anything like software application Y, with meaningless metrics to provide an inconclusive conclusion of which is better.

I'm not bitter!

"Programmed" study text *look* infantile

Until you have to re study graduate maths on your own.

Suddenly those fill in the blank questions on every other page don't seem quite so dumb.

There's something very special about some realising it's a closed book exam on the eve of doing it.

As it happens, I've just drawn a line

under twenty years off and on with the OU, terminating with an MSC Computing for Commerce and Industry - distinction, no less.

And so many of Ms Stobs' observations are spot on.

In particularly the MSophile tendencies: all submissions to be in MS compatible formats, though the final dissertation is required to be in PDF - whereas in the real world, one uses Latex or at least Lyx and does the job properly. Hence every submission got comments about poor formatting... mostly because I just did a huge cut'n'paste.

It's interesting that the technical subjects - while perhaps out of date a little - are detailed and generally quite wide ranging. And you either know the answer or you don't, unlike the 'opinion' courses - say, System Engineering or Interface Design - where you seem to be judged mainly on your ability to draw pointless diagrams that are no use in real life, simply because they are never used by anyone who knows what they're doing.

I did manage to get a significant slab of programming in - in C, no less, my advisor objected to machine code - for the dissertation, but it was clear that the programming was a sideline; most of the work was actually on the statistics of English spelling. The final submission contained exactly no source code, just some screen grabs of the software in operation. From memory, my last OU course that included actual programming was TM222 in 1990 - real live 8080!

Oh, and if you're wondering: "The text contains its own lexicon: Extracting a Spelling Reference in the Presence of OCR Errors."

SuperMemo seems quite mad.

But I'd give it a go.

We'll miss it when its gone...

8K for a post grad course is a bargain and will be looked at with nostalgia compared to the future costs of a getting higher education.

Anyway what's the alternatives for someone who has already a career in IT with family and mortgage. Go to a university full time? Assuming you can find a place, what are you and your going to live on for the 4 years? Company sponsorship, maybe but difficult to arrange when companies are more likely to looking to lay off than support your educational ambitions.

Exams - A necessary evil and at least it does force you to learn the stuff. Compare that to other "professional" courses where the only requirement is that you look half awake for a few days before being given a certificate that is not worth the paper its written on.

The courses. Yes the update rate could be quicker, buts its costs a lot to print those books you like putting your post its on and even more to rewrite them. I found most useful the "soft" humanity-oriented topics because it was a gap in my IT education and these areas do not change as much as some of the others.Maybe in a few years time when we will be given a complimentary iPad to read our material on it will be better, however until then....

My only real criticism of the courses is that the OU is becoming a Java monoculture. I know the OU is not the only university to suffer this, but it would be nice if there was at least a nod to some of the fringes of computer science such as functional programming languages, etc

Anyway I'm glad like me, Verity enjoyed the experience. The OU is one of those British institutions that shouldn't work but does. It is a greater then the sum of its parts. That's of course until the this government gets its hands on it and sends it to the education market forces grave yard.

so you are telling me that in all those years...

gonks have changed into squonks

I guess any major dude could have told me that :-)

(just pretzel logic i guess)

SAQ - Seldom Asked Question?

Read the SAQ on the first page as "Seldom Asked Question". It turned out, later on, to mean something far less amusing.

Where are your references?

Come on verity, after four years, you must have learned about the Harvard referencing system. Where are you references (after all, you don't want to run the risk of fallign foul of the plagarism police!)

SAQ

SAQ: What is the main practical use of a photo of someone dressed in mortar board and gown?

If ithey are wearing the mortar board then its an indication that they didn't go to a proper university - i.e. Oxford, where Uniform regulations (at least 30 years ago) specifically stated that the mortar board was carried and not worn!

I enjoyed it but don't bother if you only want qualifications, not worth it

My girlfriend at the time ( now my wife ) both studied the same OU courses back in the early 90's, had a really good time, especially on the summer schools!

My parents couldn't afford for me to enter higher education so I left school with a handful of GCSEs and no prospects. I managed to "finagle" my way into IT jobs with a lot of personal experience but kept hitting walls that demanded qualifications. OU is still seen as a poor man's univeristy, despite you having to learn some serious discipline with your time, the number of jobs on offer did increase afterwards. Although I must admit I still have a serious chip on my shoulder when people who prove to me they're thick as two short ones, look down their noses at me because they have "red-brick" qualifications.

Glad I made the effort, the qualifications are pretty useless but having been a bit useless at school to start with, the writing and thinking skills I gained during the courses really helped me to focus on what I should have done in the first place at school.

SAQ

I believed that SAQ meant Seldom Asked Question 'till the middle of the article and I found it amusing. Too bad.

On a related note, where I live SAQ means Société des Alcools du Québec*, and I prefer it that way.

On a totally unrelated note, I get that the OU is perhaps not the best place to go if you want to acquire real-world-ready IT skills** but I still have 2 questions:

-will the OU-acquired skills allow me to woo that new cutie in the lab next door, say with delicious UML goodness? Or something.

-is it possible to use relational algebra to find a way to avoid the catastrophic consequences of the above, such as the missus finding out about it?

*booze above the strenght of beer is a state monopoly here.

**the best place for that is often said real world

Java

After two whole years of Java, when they still hadn't shown us how to write and deploy an actual program that would run on an actual computer or other device, I decided it was time to jack it in and buy a book about Android.

At least YOUR OU is a proper uni not like OUA

I did my BAppSci(IT) through open uni australia - actually RMIT awarded the degree , Open uni took me money.

OUA is owned by 7 or 8 real unis and the idea seems to be to have you do your units across all unis - so when I went to apply for entry to a GradDipEd I had to get transcripts from all 7 (at $20 a pop) as they would not accept the OUA transcript as it is not a degree conferring institute :-(

Verities experiences seem to mirror my own wrt course content , feedback etc etc

Icon : he looks like me & I never bothered attend the graduation for either degree

A very nice piece, Verity

Especially for this:

"... an iPad on which I could pour scorn, or vice-versa..."

I saw what you did there....

"which in your case you do not have"

Oh, neatly done....

http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/parodies.html

I'll never know

I enquired about an OU math module (with an eye to completing a degree) and was told it will cost me £890 instead of the advertised £400, because I'm "not from here", after which I told them to stuff it where the sun don't shine.

Who will give me a hand designing a DIY course based on stuff like MIT Open Courseware?

MSc in retro computing

About 10 years ago, just after the cretinous Carly Fiorina had DVed my employment history by killing HP computing, I thought I'd re-skill and learn the latest, state of the art development skills from the OU (I was a contractor, so everything was DIY). The MSc in software development beckoned, I paid the money, the books arrived and the first inklings that something was wrong began to arrive. The first unit enthused about the the go-ahead and state-of-the-art technique that I was going to use to analyse a business situation, so lo and behold, I was taught to use SSADM.

Turns out that as far as the OU is concerned, the art they were talking about was pottery. I still keep the books as a reminder that the OU are rubbish...

Chris M

Peripheral to the article but...

Advice to consider modem speed when designing web pages is hardly dated. There are quite a few sites today which probably look good over the designers 100Mb Ethernet but fail badly on a 1Mb cable or DSL line. And yes, there ARE still 4kbps dialup users even if you think they aren't your target market. Some rural US users have no choice - and when I say rural I'm not talking about Wyoming - I'm talking about outer suburbs of major cities where cable doesn't go and you're 3 miles from the phone office - too far for DSL.

Verity should certainly know the more things change the more they stay the same.