Last weekend saw the completion of TMA02 for M263, taking me to the half way point in the course which I am please about as I haven't found any concept so far overly difficult to understand. I hear the next few units on Proof etc are more complicated but we'll see.
The TMA was quite a long one, consisting of 8 questions and taking a decent amount of time to complete. The TMA had a large volume of coding surrounding it, which I enjoyed doing (when the workpad was playing along) however, the OU like you to include all source code in the TMA document as well as seperate text files, which leads to a decent sized document for submission.
I assume its an anti-plaigarism tactic, allowing there software to scan the contents of the .doc file while the Tutor marking the assignment can run the source code from text.
I began to heavily anotate my course handbook with examples of any ideas I was finding myself referencing directly from the cours texts during the TMA. (My one fear with this course is that there is going to be an awful lot to remember for the exam). We are allowed to take the course handbook into the exam so it makes sense to clarify any ideas that you know you may forget by exam time directly next to there reference in the handbook, and I would definitely recommend people do it whilst working through TMA's as they cover all of the Key Ideas of the course.
Thats all for now, hopefully I will be able to report back a decent TMA score shortly, for now I need to crack on with my amphibious worlds (M255).
Although this isn't due for a few weeks I have spent the last few days working on TMA02 for MU120. I finally wrapped it up last night and I will submit it to my tutor at todays tutorial.
I haven't been giving MU120 as much time as I should, focusing most of my time on M263 as it counts towards my degree classification, but knowing that I'm starting M255 Object Oriented Programming with Java next week I thought I best get my work in order.
Maths has never been my strong point, however the TMA was fairly straight forward with the algebra sections taking up the majority of my time.
I would say that the OU teaching materials are first class at explaining mathematical topics such as algebra, and are a big step up from the way topics were presented to me at secondary school.
Maybe the government should look at licencing materials?
