I haven’t really written much about my studying with the Open University but someone recently commented on blogging their experiences throughout their courses and there might be some mileage in it.

I’ve been doing two courses this year – a level one course maths course, MST121 and a level 2 Java course, M255.

Using Mathematics (MST121)

This is a compulsory course for a BSc Computing with Psychology (B49).  I don’t mind maths but the courses I had done previously were very theoretical with no real discussion of their application.

The course has a revision phase followed by four blocks: Mathematics and modelling (geometric sequences, lines, circles and functions), Discrete modelling (population models and long term behaviour), Continuous models (calculus) and Modelling uncertainty (statistics).

I have found these to be a steady set of modules and haven’t had to put more than an hour a night in and have managed to get all the TMA done in a weekend.  The material is well integrated with books, videos and audio segments.  I haven’t enjoyed the last block (statistics), its is very dry and statistics doesn’t appeal to me but the Calculus block was very interesting expanding on material from courses I had previously completed.

The TMA are quite straight forward, as long as you have grasped the jist of the material, there are plenty of examples to guide you in the right direction.  The CMA are not so useful but this is not a formative course, which is a slight shame as I’ve scored very well, especially on blocks two and three.

Only TMA 4 and CMA 42 to complete now before finishing this course (which as I’ve already done M150 completes the Certificate in Computing and Mathematics (C50)).

Object-oriented Programming with Java (M255)

Again, this is a compulsory course but having completed M150 last year – which had quite a lot of JavaScript programming in it, so I was familiar with the OU’s teaching of programming.

This is a good introduction to OOP and Java, covering the basic concepts and providing some interesting examples for TMA (I enjoyed modelling an Enigma machine for TMA 2 in particular).  Although it’s a level two course, I’ve found it to be more manageable and less stressful than MST121 – of which both have been due around the same time.