Sunday, May 13, 2007

M263: Unit 14 - Brick Wall!!!

Well it's finally happened. I just don't get unit 14. I have tried working my way through questions 4, 5 and 6, by following examples in the course text and get about halfway through answering the question when bang I hit a brick wall. It looks like I will for the first time ever not be sending in a complete TMA. What is doubly frustrating is this is the first section in any course text for any course that I have not fully comprehended.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

M359: A Lack Of Response!

Having just started Block 3 “The database language SQL” I am really enjoying M359. Yet there is one aspect that is really frustrating and that is the lack of response within the M359 FirstClass conferences from OU staff (i.e. the course team, tutors and conference moderators). A number of messages have been posted from students where a response from the OU staff would have helped a lot but none has appeared.

For example:
  1. There is a query concerning Q1 of TMA02 dating back to 08.Apr, and yet no response has been supplied from the OU staff;
  2. I posted a message on the 17.Apr asking “How comparable is section 5 (Normal forms) of block 2 with what is taught for M263 unit 11 (Databases) section 4 (Normal forms)?”. Yet again no response from the OU staff;
  3. Yesterday I posted a question, “For M263 if we want to say that B does not determine A we write it as B /~> A. Is there an equivalent in M359?”. I am not going to hold my breath.

Although this is a level 3 course and we are expected to do a lot of thinking for ourselves, this is the first presentation of M359 and for some of the students this is their first OU course. Therefore I am finding the lack of response very poor.