Last night I got home to find a letter from the OU giving my result for M450. To my surprise (after all the heart ache and worry) I got a DISTINCTION.
The letter was the standard OU result letter also showing my OCAS (83) and OES (87). There was no explanation as to why there had been a delay in releasing my result.
Well its the 12th of December, the day I should have received my M450 result by, but my course page is still showing the result as Pending. The most frustrating aspect is not being given any reason why my result is pending. I do hate being kept in the dark!
I see back in 2005 the OUSA (Open University Students Association) East of England Region said
The Association calls upon the University to introduce a mechanism so that where final results are notified as "pending" to an OU student, that the reason(s) and likely delay period are given and subsequent explanation given for any additional delays.
I have just been informed by a fellow M450 student, Stuart, that the results are out. So I quickly went to my student home page only to discover that my result is Pending.
It has not been possible to finalise your result in the time available before our scheduled results release date. We realise how important it is for you to receive your result quickly and we are working to provide this as a priority. Our aim is to send your result to you within six weeks where this is possible but often it will be within less time than this. Unfortunately the priority we give this work means we are unable to handle related telephone enquires during the initial six week period.
The really annoying aspect is that the student home page gives no clear indication as to why my result is delayed, although a couple of thoughts have come to mind. So I am now going to have to wait for up to another 6 weeks before getting my result :(
Still Stuart got a distinction. Well done Stuart!!! And two other friends of mine have also got their results. One got a distinction and the other passed.
This morning I received an e-mail concerning my application for one of the two places at the Computer Science 2008 conference. Unfortunately due to the number of applicants and the "high quality of all the projects" I was not selected, though the feedback was positive and I am now really intrigued as to what final grade I am going to achieve for my project.
However, the selection panel agreed that your project was highly commendable and you will be receiving a letter of commendation in recognition of this from the M450 course chair.
I received an e-mail last week from a lecturer in the Department of Computing at the OU asking if I was interested in applying for one of the two places, in the form of bursaries, at the Computer Science 2008 conference in December. This all sounded very interesting and I replied saying that I would be interested in attending. Yet the part of the e-mail that really surprised me was...
...your name was put forward as a potential candidate by the M450 course team who were very impressed with quality of your undergraduate project work.
Considering how I felt about the project and what I had produced, I was really gobsmacked when reading the above comment. Still I must not get me hopes up to high with regards to my final result for M450. Only 39 more days until the results are supposed to be available.
As previously mentioned I posted my ECA on Monday (8th Sept) at about 3:00pm, and I have just checked my StudentHome page and it is saying that my ECA has been received by the OU. The wonders of modern snail-mail.
I finally submitted my ECA for M450 yesterday. Three copies printed, bound (Staples did a very good job, £9 less £3 discount) and posted (First class £4.30), plus not forgetting to obtain the proof of posting.
This means for me that the course is now finished and all I have to do is wait for the result, which apparently can take some time.
Over the next few weeks I am going to try and put together some advice on how to tackle M450 for those students thinking of taking it in the future, especially as it is not the easiest of courses.
Now I have to register for my next course, M366 - Natural and artificial intelligence, even though (having done a quick search via Google) it seems that it might not be the easiest of courses. This will hopefully be the last course of my degree.
Last week I got the result back for my MU120 TMA03, 95%, and yesterday I got the result for M450 TMA02, 86%. Although I did better for M450 TMA02 than TMA01 I am still finding the research aspect of the project most frustrating.
Well I have finally submitted TMA02 for M450, 1 week after cut-off. This is the first time in all my OU studies that I have had to have an extension. The cause of the problem is the research we have to do for this course, it is proving difficult, frustrating and demoralizing. The course text does not go into any detail as to why we are having to do the research and what we should be looking for. Still at least I can now press on with the core elements of my project.
On Tuesday I got the results back for my MU120 CMA43. I got a very pleasing 96% and lost a couple of marks due to silly mistakes. These mistakes I believe are due to the nature of CMA's in that being multiple choice I tend to go through them a lot quicker than I would a TMA thus resulting in not studying a question as thoroughly as perhaps I should.
Yesterday morning I got the results for my first TMA for M450. Even though I got 80% I was disappointed in my tutor's comments, in that they were very brief and in some instances cryptic. This left me feeling frustrated and confused, but after a lengthy telephone conversation with him last night I feel a lot better. He enlightened me to what he actually meant, thus I now understand where my TMA was lacking and how it could have been improved. I now realise that one of my biggest problems with my project is that I have had tunnel vision, in that I knew what the problem was (difficulty in sending bank statements) and how I wanted to solve it. This has meant that when I was looking for research I was basing my investigation on the solution rather than the problem and finding alternative solutions to it. In fact I now appreciate that my whole project is based around my solution, even it's title "Automated archiving and electronic transmission (via SMTP) of customer bank statements", as opposed to describing the problem, followed by looking for any solutions, discussing their strengthens and weaknesses, and then selecting a viable one. With this in mind I now feel more confident that for my next TMA I should be able to produce a superior paper.
Last night I finally managed to submit my first TMA for M450, 5 hours before cut-off. The course started on February 2nd and it has been a long hard slog during these past 24 days to get the TMA completed, even though the course team say in the assessment guide
completing each TMA could take as little as five or six hours
There are 2 reasons for this TMA taking so long, the first being that I dived straight into the TMA and although I have started tasks such as a project schedule and an E-R model, I did them as part of the TMA. The second reason is that I have experienced a lot of difficulty in finding any research papers in relation to my project. This become a frustrating exercise and started to make finishing the TMA feel tedious. And I don't believe that I am alone in these sentiments.
Anyway I can now get down to some real practical work, starting with the statement of requirements, and the database analysis and design. With this in mind hopefully TMA02 wont take so long to complete when I come around to doing it.
Having read all 16 units and now only having CMA44, CMA45 and TMA04 left to do I have decided to put MU120 on hold. My reason for this is that M450 officially started on Saturday (02.Feb) and its first TMA is due on 26.Feb. I therefore want to concentrate on the M450 TMA01 and will resume MU120 after 26.Feb.
Having been allocated my tutor I e-mailed him yesterday with a description of my proposed project and saying that the scope would be the back-end process and database.
In his reply to me he said...
it might be prudent to plan the whole and implement a prototype
I have always appreciated that for the project you don't need to produce a fully working system, even though it has been my intention to do so as it will be used by my employer on a daily basis. Therefore I now potentially have a conflict of interest between what I need to do for my project and what my employer requires, with regards to time. It's going to be interesting to see if I can keep both parties happy.
Although I have not yet started looking through the course materials, I have had for some time an idea as to what to do for my project.
I plan to develop a system for the "archiving and electronic transmission (via SMTP) of statements" for the bank that I work for.
This system will comprise of 2 areas:
1. A database and a back-end module to import the raw statement data into the database, plus identify those statements that need to be transmitted.
2. A front-end client module which will allow users to:
2.a. Release those statements ready for transmission;
2.b. Select, display, and re-transmit selected statements upon request;
2.c. Update customer control data (i.e. e-mail address).
There are a number of different areas that I will have to investigate, such as the connection between Java and MS SQL Server, as although I know that this is possible, it is not something that I have done in the past.
Now I am in the fortunate position that I can work on this full time, yet I am starting to wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew, time wise. Normally I would say that it is possible, but I get the impression from some of the postings in FirstClass that how the OU want us to approach the project and how we would actually do it in real life does differ. Plus a quick search (via Google) threw up the following:
About 40 per cent of the work develops and assesses skills for project scoping and specification, self-monitoring of progress and presentation. The remaining 60 per cent concerns the technical detail of the project and is project specific. Course materials will be made available online. Students are expected to retain the material associated with the courses on which they build for their project.
Students will develop a project topic, specification and plan, carry it out, and then write it up. A tutor will advise and guide students, but they will be expected to produce their work independently, without close supervision. They must also keep a project log and use it for an assessed critical review of their work. The emphasis is on students being reflective practitioners, developing not only the technical aspects of their project but also reviewing and thinking about what they have learnt from doing the work, to further improve their skills. Tutor-marked assignments provide milestones and feedback to help them monitor their progress. Guidance notes, study calendar and other supporting material will be made available on the web.
ref: http://www3.open.ac.uk/employment/associate-lecturers/courses/M450.shtm
I am therefore wondering whether I should just concentrate on the first area (the database and back-end module) as opposed to the whole system, and complete the second area in my own time. I think I will have to consult with my tutor once I know who he / she is.
The M450 Computing project course website is now accessible, although at present it's content is very limited. 1 piece of new and 2 downloadable documents (study calendar and tutor allocation form). It is the tutor allocation form that was of particular interest to me as it states...
"Please indicate below the single course that most closely relates to your chosen project topic"
Now my understanding was that with the amalgamation of the various computing project courses into a single course, a student could base their project around several 3rd level courses as opposed to having to choose 1 specific 3rd level course. With this in mind I contacted OU and got the following reply from the M450 course manager...
"Yes it is possible for you to choose a project based on more than one of the level 3 computing courses and indeed we hope that people will do this, so your idea of basing a project on M301 and M359 seems excellent."
This for me is really good news.
With M359 coming to an end (well for me anyway) and thus only needing a further 90 points to complete my degree, I decided a couple of months ago to plan out my remaining courses.
For B29 the Computing degree you are required to do a project, TM450, so I decided that this would be my main course for next year. Now as I wanted to complete my project without any interference of any other courses I had to decided on what to do over the winter period, I decided on MU120. Being a level 1 course with no exam it suited me fine and I could work at my own pace thus reducing the overlap with the project. For my final course I decided on doing M366, Natural and artificial intelligence, as this is a subject that has always interested me. The current course was running from Oct 07 through to Jun 08, so Oct 08 looked like a good bet, I would have just finished the project and would have my degree completed by Jun 09.
So my plan looked like this:
| Course | Title | Start | End |
| MU120 | Open Mathematics | Sep 07 | Jun 08 |
| M450 | The Computing Project | Feb 08 | Oct 08 |
| M366 | Natural and Artificial Intelligence | Oct 08 | Jun 09 |
Well on Wednesday I discovered that M366 will not be running in Oct 08, and the next presentation after the current one will be Feb 09. This is most annoying as a) I will have a gap between finishing my project and starting M366 and b) it means I will finish my degree 4 months later than originally planned. I did contemplate contacting the OU to see if I could swap MU120 and M366 around but this would have defeated my objective for doing MU120 and also today I have discovered that there is not on Oct 08 presentation of MU120.
My plan now looks like this:
| Course | Title | Start | End |
| MU120 | Open Mathematics | Sep 07 | Jun 08 |
| M450 | The Computing Project | Feb 08 | Oct 08 |
| M366 | Natural and Artificial Intelligence | Feb 09 | Oct 09 |
After I have completed M359 I will only need 90 points for my degree. This equates to three 30 point courses and today I registered for 2 of them. For my winter course I have decided to do MU120 - Open Mathematics, for a number of reasons. The primary reason being that I want to do a course that I can complete as quickly as possible and with MU120 not only is it a level 1 course but also there is no exam at the end of the course. Why to I want to do a course as quickly as possible? Well my main course for next year will be The Computing Project M450 and I want to give this my full attention without any interruptions from any other courses.
ref: Open mathematics
