Open University - (IT, TU100), need some advice

mug2k · 1 Dec 2013 at 18:05

Hi

I started the TU100 module in October (yep not even 2 months into it) and to be honest I'm really disliking it as I'm finding it so boring. My primary reason for starting this degree was to do programming as I thought I might enjoy it (done some pascal at college) and again I'm not liking Sense at all. I think I've started this degree for the wrong reasons being possible future employment.

My educational background is in IT but that was over a decade ago and it seems I don't have the same enthusiasm for the subject any more. I was originally going to do a Natural Sciences (have an interest in Biology and Cosmology) degree but changed my mind and opted for IT because I thought it might of been a more natural fit based on my background

Does any one know if it's possible to start something else 2 months into the study year. Saying that I I'm not even 100% on what I want to do, that's always been my problem.

Thanks,

'Harry · 1 Dec 2013 at 18:15

Phone them.
Ask your tutor.
Email them.

dowie · 1 Dec 2013 at 18:40

presumably there are some free choice credits that make up many degrees... if this is your first module doesn't it mean you're stuck with following a particular degree path or can you not just complete the module and decide to use it towards a natural sciences degree.... (assuming they have some free choice credits....)

mug2k · 1 Dec 2013 at 19:40

The TU100 is a 60 point course and compulsory for the IT degree's so not sure if I could transfer the credits. Anyway I'll just call them tomorrow and see what options I have.

dowie · 1 Dec 2013 at 19:59

30 credits free choice in the natural sciences degree... so it might potentially count for something...

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/qualification/pathways/q64-8.htm

You’ll also choose one of four 30-credit modules according to your particular scientific interest:

Introducing health sciences: a case study approach (SDK125)
Topics in science (S142)
Topics in health sciences (SK143)
Essential mathematics 1 (MST124).

Alternatively, you could choose 30 credits from a non-science module if you prefer.

mug2k · 1 Dec 2013 at 23:29

dowie said:
30 credits free choice in the natural sciences degree... so it might potentially count for something...

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/qualification/pathways/q64-8.htm

The TU100 is a 60pt module so don't think it would be any good for that as it references 30pts but thanks for finding that for me.

I'll give them a call tomorrow and see what my options are, ideally I'd like to restart and do something different next October and in the meanwhile I'll do some short courses at OpenLearn to see what I really want to do (should have done this beforehand ffs).

Just hoping Student Finance won't reject re-funding me if I were to start again.

robfosters · 1 Dec 2013 at 23:39

They shouldn't reject you. I'm sure you have to complete a years study before you become ineligible for finance.

I'm doing the access course Y033 before embarking on an environmental science degree. I am really enjoying it so far.

To be honest, as others have said, My Digital Life is pretty much standard in all computing based degrees. But speaking to other OU students, they have all said that some modules have really not grabbed them and they have plodded on, whereas other modules are very good.

What is the actual degree you have registered on?

mug2k · 1 Dec 2013 at 23:54

robfosters said:
They shouldn't reject you. I'm sure you have to complete a years study before you become ineligible for finance.

I'm doing the access course Y033 before embarking on an environmental science degree. I am really enjoying it so far.

To be honest, as others have said, My Digital Life is pretty much standard in all computing based degrees. But speaking to other OU students, they have all said that some modules have really not grabbed them and they have plodded on, whereas other modules are very good.

What is the actual degree you have registered on?

BSc (Honours) Computing and IT: Computer science pathway

In retrospect I rushed my decision and should have waited a year instead of jumping straight in. My head said do IT because that's what I know/knew but it's just mind numbingly boring and I chose the computer science pathway because I thought I'd enjoy the programming but it isn't doing it for me. Health and science subjects interest me so I think a few courses at OpenLearn will help me make a decision on a future degree and I'll try some writing and maths courses to brush up my skills.

HangTime · 1 Dec 2013 at 23:55

mug2k said:
I think I've started this degree for the wrong reasons being possible future employment.

My personal opinion is that the most important factor when choosing higher education courses is to pick a subject area that you have a genuine interest in. I made the mistake of choosing a degree in what I thought I was good at, and found motivation very hard to come by. I went from being pretty much a straight A student at GCSE/A-level to barely scraping through with an Honours degree (pretty useless given most graduate recruiters want 2:1 or better). 10 years later, I took up postgraduate study with the OU and chose a subject area that interested me. I found that went much better.

edit: That's not to say that employment prospects shouldn't factor into the decision, if that is the primary reason one is studying.

dowie · 1 Dec 2013 at 23:56

mug2k said:
The TU100 is a 60pt module so don't think it would be any good for that as it references 30pts but thanks for finding that for me.

Its very likely more than good enough... I'm 99% sure about that tbh... From the link you've got to do 330 credits made up of compulsory or optional course modules - if you can also select 30 credits from *any* module to get up to the full 360 credits for your degree it is highly unlikely they're going to deny you a degree because in doing a 60 credit module as your free choice course you've actually fulfilled more than the requirements and completed 390 credits...

mug2k · 2 Dec 2013 at 00:05

HangTime said:
My personal opinion is that the most important factor when choosing higher education courses is to pick a subject area that you have a genuine interest in. I made the mistake of choosing a degree in what I thought I was good at, and found motivation very hard to come by. I went from being pretty much a straight A student at GCSE/A-level to barely scraping through with an Honours degree (pretty useless given most graduate recruiters want 2:1 or better). 10 years later, I took up postgraduate study with the OU and chose a subject area that interested me. I found that went much better.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense and it's maybe why I'm not very motivated or enthusiastic about this course/content. I've studied this kind of stuff before (albeit ages ago) and it's just not peaking my interest. I think this should be the point where I'm most excited but it just isn't there and I think it's best I quit before I get too far into this and it affects my future funding.

mug2k · 2 Dec 2013 at 00:06

dowie said:
Its very likely more than good enough... I'm 99% sure about that tbh... From the link you've got to do 330 credits made up of compulsory or optional course modules - if you can also select 30 credits from *any* module to get up to the full 360 credits for your degree it is highly unlikely they're going to deny you a degree because in doing a 60 credit module as your free choice course you've actually fulfilled more than the requirements and completed 390 credits...

I think your right actually, problem is I don't really want to finish this module now

robfosters · 2 Dec 2013 at 00:41

Hangtime has the most sensible advice.

The good thing about my access course is it is a science, technology and maths course. Comes with the added bonus of costing only £25 and half off your first L1 module on successful completion.

It has shown me many different aspects of the subjects. I originally chose earth sciences, but found myself far more interested in environmental stuff like climate change, biodiversity, ecosystems and all that, so I changed my degree,

Only ever study something you're interested in, otherwise what will happen is you will put off study sessions, and eventually be rushing to finish every assignment, which is extremely counter-productive.

mug2k · 2 Dec 2013 at 00:50

robfosters said:
Hangtime has the most sensible advice.

The good thing about my access course is it is a science, technology and maths course. Comes with the added bonus of costing only £25 and half off your first L1 module on successful completion.

It has shown me many different aspects of the subjects. I originally chose earth sciences, but found myself far more interested in environmental stuff like climate change, biodiversity, ecosystems and all that, so I changed my degree,

Only ever study something you're interested in, otherwise what will happen is you will put off study sessions, and eventually be rushing to finish every assignment, which is extremely counter-productive.

I was quite interested in doing the same access course your doing but didn't qualify for the cheap route I think it was was around £600 otherwise and not available via student finance. Looks like a good primer for many subjects.

drunkenmaster · 2 Dec 2013 at 01:40

Few things to point out, you can usually get a refund on partially completely courses, you could ask them about stopping the module, might be something else you can start in Feb, or maybe just start a new next year.

Second, Open Uni do "Open" degree's, as in, do 360 credits of whatever in the hell you want........ and that is it, no other rules. Okay there are a few modules that are so similar you can't count them both towards a degree but there aren't many situations you'd want to do both of these.

I'm doing an "open" maths + computing(computer science really, going for programming and things like algorithms and logic on the maths side), mostly because I knew how ruddy awful almost all the level 1 stuff is. This is partially because it's open Uni, and partially because the first year at most uni's has been turned into a complete joke these days.

The only thing I have done at level one is a 30 credit maths module, ms121 IIRC, which isn't 100% required but it had been some time since I did maths last, it was one of the few non BS lvl 1 modules and led nicely into lvl 2. My first year was ms121 and 90 credits in lvl 2 modules.

If you can get them to let you stop doing the TU100 module in one way or another, be it partial refund(I'd guess you'd get 70-90% back at this stage) or finishing that module, taking that on the chin and then just doing whatever you want for the rest of the degree.

In terms of what you might like to do, my general advice is, absolutely do not judge the BS namby pamby intro courses with "real" modules. You should find more advanced modules much more interesting, the intro modules are almost general knowledge crap of which very little is useful or relevant.

If you also save those credits and the time on those modules, and instead say do the lvl 1 maths(there is an easy and a harder one.. or there was) a chemistry, and a couple of other things it might also give you the basis for moving forward. You end up liking maths and focus on that, or you like chem and focus on that, the 30 credits towards maths or chem or history won't hurt you going forwards. History is good for report writing, analysing reports, chem is chem, maths is needed for pushing forwards with maths, but helps with programming, chem, physics, and looks good to employee's.

As said, considering what else you can do with those 60 credits, which can basically help the first year be a "taster" year for 4 30 credit modules in area's you like, the 60 credit intro courses are a joke IMHO.

On most of their computing style course they have this intro modules, then, they start a "real" programming module at lvl 2 which both assumes NO previous programming. AFAIK TU100 has stuff on design, loads of insanely low level info people should generally know about the internet and really stupidly easy stupid, how to share documents online. Then it will teach you programming via a truly pointless high level language that does nothing. You WILL start completely new from scratch for real programming at lvl 2, making the lvl 1 half arsed programming, just entirely pointless. It's an intro module for what might be 20+ degree's of which only 5% is going to be relevant to someone doing a specific degree.

JonJ678 · 2 Dec 2013 at 08:27

It's entirely possibly to go into software development with no qualifications whatsoever. The easiest route would be proving competence on one of the open source projects. What attracted you to the OU?

a66as · 2 Dec 2013 at 09:36

Are OU courses as valuable as brick courses? was thinking of doing an HND in engineering or computing/maths

HangTime · 2 Dec 2013 at 22:14

OU degrees are generally well respected within industry, if nothing else because they show a good level of motivation from the student.

mug2k · 2 Dec 2013 at 22:34

drunkenmaster said:
Few things to point out, you can usually get a refund on partially completely courses, you could ask them about stopping the module, might be something else you can start in Feb, or maybe just start a new next year.

Second, Open Uni do "Open" degree's, as in, do 360 credits of whatever in the hell you want........ and that is it, no other rules. Okay there are a few modules that are so similar you can't count them both towards a degree but there aren't many situations you'd want to do both of these.

I'm doing an "open" maths + computing(computer science really, going for programming and things like algorithms and logic on the maths side), mostly because I knew how ruddy awful almost all the level 1 stuff is. This is partially because it's open Uni, and partially because the first year at most uni's has been turned into a complete joke these days.

The only thing I have done at level one is a 30 credit maths module, ms121 IIRC, which isn't 100% required but it had been some time since I did maths last, it was one of the few non BS lvl 1 modules and led nicely into lvl 2. My first year was ms121 and 90 credits in lvl 2 modules.

If you can get them to let you stop doing the TU100 module in one way or another, be it partial refund(I'd guess you'd get 70-90% back at this stage) or finishing that module, taking that on the chin and then just doing whatever you want for the rest of the degree.

In terms of what you might like to do, my general advice is, absolutely do not judge the BS namby pamby intro courses with "real" modules. You should find more advanced modules much more interesting, the intro modules are almost general knowledge crap of which very little is useful or relevant.

If you also save those credits and the time on those modules, and instead say do the lvl 1 maths(there is an easy and a harder one.. or there was) a chemistry, and a couple of other things it might also give you the basis for moving forward. You end up liking maths and focus on that, or you like chem and focus on that, the 30 credits towards maths or chem or history won't hurt you going forwards. History is good for report writing, analysing reports, chem is chem, maths is needed for pushing forwards with maths, but helps with programming, chem, physics, and looks good to employee's.

As said, considering what else you can do with those 60 credits, which can basically help the first year be a "taster" year for 4 30 credit modules in area's you like, the 60 credit intro courses are a joke IMHO.

On most of their computing style course they have this intro modules, then, they start a "real" programming module at lvl 2 which both assumes NO previous programming. AFAIK TU100 has stuff on design, loads of insanely low level info people should generally know about the internet and really stupidly easy stupid, how to share documents online. Then it will teach you programming via a truly pointless high level language that does nothing. You WILL start completely new from scratch for real programming at lvl 2, making the lvl 1 half arsed programming, just entirely pointless. It's an intro module for what might be 20+ degree's of which only 5% is going to be relevant to someone doing a specific degree.

I realise TU100 is an intro module and not really a good representation of what the actual degree will be like but I'm just so bored with this IT stuff and I think it would be best if I learnt something completely different.

From what I've read Python is a good beginners language and it would have given students a proper look at coding instead of Senses's GUI setup.

An 'open' degree is quite interesting and I like the way you can choose whatever modules you want to do but I'd be a bit worried how employers would look at it as it's not a 'proper' named degree. Also I'd probably end up doing a hugely varied style of modules walk away with a very unfocused looking degree. If I ever were to do a 2nd degree I'd defo do and open one.

JonJ678 said:
It's entirely possibly to go into software development with no qualifications whatsoever. The easiest route would be proving competence on one of the open source projects. What attracted you to the OU?

I chose the OU because I can work and study at the same time, I'm not in a position to stop working and go to uni full-time so it was really my only option.

I'm most likely going to spend a year doing 'free' courses and see what I like before committing to a new degree.

drunkenmaster · 2 Dec 2013 at 23:41

I think in general employee's these days more look at a degree as the fact that you can finish something a bit harder. When it comes to it, you can likely have OU classify it as a degree, or just put Maths and computing degree and explain it in an interview. I believe you can apply for accreditation for open degree's which, if you've done basically the normal computing degree + 2-3 modules of harder stuff rather than the wasteful intro course, then they'll hardly say no.

Yes, they should use python but the problem there is for everyone who does TU100 that doesn't then do "proper" programming, but maybe design or something else, then it's wasted, but then Sense probably does nothing for those guys. There are a dozen programs like sense, if you look on edX(online courses for free but with no actual qualification with modules from places like MIT/Berkley, can't remember if it's Harvard as well on there), intro to computer science uses, Scratch which is a similar learning programming through building blocks style thing. i think the difference is there that Scratch is like one or two weeks, not the whole thing, they do python before and after it.

I would definitely give OU a call and get some advice, I think it's highly likely they'd be willing to transfer you to other modules and/or give you a significant refund to start a different module next chance you get. Then again if you want to finish, you can always change what degree you're doing, you can even just get the 60 credits and then start a chem degree or something and not even include the 60 credits.

I would in general aim for one or two things you currently think you might enjoy, with programming you can really jump straight to, I did M255 which I think is being replaced(or has been), you don't need to have done anything before it. the more difficult of the lvl 1 maths modules would be useful for programming, maths, physics, chem, or just looks good so is a good general start point... unless you hate maths

For me I have done, or aimed at 60 credits a piece on maths and programming. At level 3 i've started one module now in maths, number theory(hard) and logic(easy) but it's interesting none the less. I don't know if I'll split lvl 3 evenly between maths/programming, I might focus more on maths as I've found right the way through that maths is harder to learn and being guided helps, while the programming modules have been very easy by comparison and I often feel like I'm being held back with modules that are too slow. IE I'd prefer to get help with the harder part and learn the extra programming on my own. Either way I'll basically be able to say to employee's, I did everything useful on the OU computer science style degree, but cut out the useless crap and added more useful stuff.

I've previously dropped out of uni and a-levels before that mostly for medical reasons but uni, the first year was so so so so boring I just stopped going, and that trend just continued over time even though the content got more interesting. I really feel these insanely boring and low level intro modules just make a degree feel like it will be boring and worthless rather than motivating you to do more by being really interesting.