University life so far

Well I’m now into my fourth week here in Dundee, and I suppose now would be a good time to document the experience and my thoughts so far on University life.

I’ve now almost had three weeks of teaching and overall things are going well so far I think with all four of my modules this term. The four modules are:

Programming
Personal Web Pages
Web Fundamentals
Personal Study Skills

The programming module uses C# which is a language I’ve had no previous experience with so far and as such is taking a bit of getting used to. It takes me a bit of time and effort in order to get my head round the concepts and syntax of the language, but I’m getting there with almost all the assessed exercises completed so far.

Personal Web Pages is the module that I’m enjoying the most, where we have to create a seven page website based around the topic of “My Top 5…..”, where I have the chosen the topic of my Top 5 Football grounds. My site is almost complete, and so far complies with the current XHTML and CSS standards which is good. I’ll post a link to the site when it is completed.

Web Fundamentals is a “funny” subject at the moment, with the tutor having been off ill for every class so far which has resulted in an awkward situation so far. The first lecture we had to go and find a tutor to fill in, and then for the first lab session no tutor turned up at all!

So far we’ve had two lectures and one lab session for this module, with the lectures being a mixture of vague points read from the module descriptor combined with anecdotal evidence and the one lecture we’ve had so far involved following through a booklet which taught us how to use Dreamweaver to insert tables and images etc into a webpage. Now even I can manage that without Dreamweaver! Hopefully it will improve before too long.

The Personal Study Skills module is a combination of students from the Computing school and the Health school and involves group work on a hybrid topic between the two subject areas. So far it is going well and it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Well that’s it so far here in Dundee and overall things are going well I feel, although I do need to install some decent broadband in the flat because this mobile broadband malarkey is far too temperamental for my liking. I think Virgin Media will be getting a phone call shortly to bail me out, although I am open to recommendations!

Oh, and any C# tips and advice is gratefully received!