It’s been quite a while since I last posted about my progression with my OU courses. Lately I’ve been extremely busy at work, I’ve been on training and have had my second OU course running concurrently. Therefore, combining all that has been going on with family life, it has been rather difficult to find the time to do much else.
I’ve now completed the study for T175, Networked Living and I am now working on the end of course assessment (ECA). This is an assignment that encompasses the course study and is marked by another tutor. I’ve made good progress with this ECA so far and have a few more weeks to tweak its contents prior to submission. It will then be a while before I find out my Overall Examination Score (OES) as to whether I have passed the course.
I have really enjoyed studying the course. The course has been extremely interesting and I can definitely say I’ve gained a greater awareness as to impacts, both positive and negative, that networked living has on society. This understanding is reflected in my assignment scores; the results of these have been fairly high and this has been consistent throughout the course. I’m currently awaiting the return of my final assignment score, excluding this, I have so far achieved 66% towards my Overall Continual Assessment Score (OCAS). Students are required to score a minimum of 40% for OCAS and 40% for the examinable component (OES) in order to pass the course.
As mentioned earlier, I have also been studying my second 30 credit, level 1 course – M150. This course is called Data, Computing and Information. I’ve completed my initial assignment for this course and scored 96%. I’m now commencing work on the second assignment, this is due in on Tuesday. The study of this course has been more involved and looked in greater detail at the componentry and functionality of the hardware and software contained within a PC. Future course units will require students to develop code using Javascript. So far, I have found this course to be reinforcing and developing my current knowledge, rather than learning new skills.
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Over the last few months since my last post about the GYBC website development, alot of work has been undertaken on the Web Improvement Project with changes and developments being made on a daily basis. During this time, I have also migrated our intranet onto our CMS environment.
Unfortunately, we have had some resourcing issues over this time period: we lost one Web Developer early in the New Year and our Web Communications Manager will shortly be leaving. This has resulted in some significant delays to the redevelopment project.
Due to these resourcing issues and resulting delays, a decision has been made by the management team to undertake a pre-beta test of the new corporate website earlier than originally intended. There are further details about the pre-beta test in the Councils press release and the site is available at http://www2.great-yarmouth.gov.uk
As previously mentioned, this test is being undertaken alot sooner than originally intended. Testers/visitors must be aware that this site is still under considerable development; functionality may be added, changed or removed at any time and the site may go offline without prior warning.
As a result of this continual development there are a number of issues relating to the functionality and operation of the site that still need resolving. Some of these are listed below:
- Potential browser compatability issues with all browsers as development is still underway. This is minimised, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and more recent releases of Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera are pretty stable. Browser testing is currently being undertaken and a the development comes into its final stages all issues will be ironed out.
- Alternative font sizes, contrast views and text only templates are still under development.
- Content is still being added to the site. At present, the majority of the pages will show a content placeholder with default text.
- Functionality is also still under development, some of which are nearly completed (recycling and waste and postcode) whilst others are still works in progress (councillors information, for example)
The objective of the test is not to provide feedback on the clearly lacking content. Instead, we are requesting feedback on the navigational structure and design of the site. All feedback, comments, questions and suggestions are welcome. Please either leave a comment to this post, contact me via Twitter (@phillipdade) or email me: phillip@great-yarmouth.gov.uk/mail@phillipdade.com