So, as I mentioned in my earlier post, my textbook for the Systems Analysis and Design, Level 2 course is a newer edition (4th) than the one that the course materials and study guide book is based on (3rd). Around the middle of the week before last (around Oct 22) I learned from my instructor that although the "powers that be" will not actually be changing the computer-administered, multiple-choice, final exam they are going to review the questions and will remove any on topics that are not actually covered in the 4th Edition. At least, that's what they said they would do - now I can only hope that they actually do this.

Then, on the Friday, as I was preparing to wrap up the homework exercises for chapter 11 I decided to look ahead to chapter 12, which was supposed to be "Advanced Topics in Object Oriented Design" only to discover that, in 4th edition, chapter 12 was now "Designing Databases" which had been the title of chapter 13 in 3rd Edition!

My initial reaction was "OMG!"  After all, at this point all I knew was that an entire chapter, to which I was expected to dedicate 9 hours of in class time and 1.75 hours of homework time, had simply been removed from the text.  I immediately brought the text to the instructor and pointed out the discrepancy. We looked through the next few chapters, in case it had just been moved further on in the book and I eventually noticed that some of the content from the 3rd edition chapter 12 had been moved into other chapters.

Because of the importance of this particular section, the instructor was going to give me his copy of 3rd edition to take home and review for this chapter. However, as I was looking through the full table of contents trying to locate where other content might have been moved I discovered that there were two "Online Supplemental Chapters", one of which was titled "Advanced Topics in Object Oriented Design"! 

I immediately opened the online chapter and reviewed its content to make sure it contained all of the information from the 3rd edition chapter 12 that we hadn't already found in another chapter in 4th edition. It did, so it looks like all the content I'm expected to learn for this "module" of the course is available to me through the 4th edition, I just have to jump hither and yon around the text book to read all the right bits and figure out which questions from what chapters are comparable to the ones originally assigned. 

I'm not particularly happy that I'm being forced to figure out these differences on my own, or that they even matter - after all, it would have been much easier if they had revised the "Learning Guide" to match the 4th edition.  {sigh}

:-j(enni)

Good gravy... I had to buy the books for my Student Success Strategies course today and talk about sticker shock - I had to shell out $84 for a total of three soft cover books, each about 8-1/2" x 11" in size and 1/4" thick but of which only one was an actual text book. (The other two consisted of a "journal" and a "scheduler". The Journal has all these touchy feel-y questions and blank pages that you're supposed to write in so it can help you work out your stress and concerns about school. The scheduler is a typical old fashioned paper-based student scheduling book, which I don't need as I use Outlook for that kind of thing...)

Just to put this into some perspective - the text book for my Systems Analysis and Design course is a single hard cover book that is about 8-1/2" x 11" in size but 1" thick that is quite densely filled with content and diagrams and, after taxes, it was $91 - less than $10 more than this measly, mostly useless, soft cover junk!

I mean, come ON!

It's highway robbery I tell you.

:-j(enni)

My first course at CDI is "System Analysis and Design, Level 2" and the text book I purchased from the school with the Canadian people's hard earned tax dollars ($91.35 of them to be precise) is Systems Analysis & Design In A Changing World, Fourth Edition. Please take note of that last, italicized bit - it says Fourth Edition.

The fourth edition is the "current" edition. It was first published on March 28, 2008. "The Powers That Be" [TPTB] at CDI decided to "move on" to the fourth edition as of their current academic year which started in September. This means that new students in the System Administrator/Web Developer program (that's me, remember?) who buy their text book new (vs. trying to save a buck by picking up a used copy) get their meaty little hands on "the latest and greatest". It's the same, excellent textbook[*] but now it's

!!NEW AND IMPROVED!!

(You know, errata fixed and improvements based on feedback from students and instructors who used the earlier editions, and whatnot.)

[*] It really is quite an excellent textbook. And I should know, given the excessive number of painfully awful door stoppers and the few, the rare, the beautiful textbook gems I've encountered while earning two undergraduate degrees over eleven years of post-secondary education...

That's great, right? I've got the best version of the text that's been published. It's about as up to date as anything about the high tech sector can be when published in dead-tree format and content that has been improved and, oh, did I mention, reorganized.

"So what?" you ask. "Reorganized for clarity, I'm sure. That can only make things better for you all around."

You'd think so, wouldn't you?  And, in fact, I bet you would probably be right ... if only TPTB had also decided to upgrade their custom course "Learning Guide" - their "Learning Guide" that describes each of the "Modules" for the course, including the reading assignments (by chapter and page) and assigned homework exercises - to the fourth edition.

The first major discrepancy I discovered was that the Appendix A (part of the reading assignment for Module 1) was not in the text and was only available as an online component. Appendices B, C and D were included, in their entirety, in the "Learning Guide" as they were only available online with the third edition but, as A was still part of the third edition text, it was noticeably absent.  So, being a wise sort, I printed a copy of the PDF for Appendix A, and then I asked the instructor if I could compare it to what was originally in the third edition text. (I figured that, as they'd moved it online, there might be some minor changes I'd want to be aware of.)

Well, it was a very good thing I decided to do that, as it turned out that one of the assigned homework exercises had been removed in the new edition. In other words, if I'd done the questions as listed in the "Learning Guide" I would have done an entirely WRONG set of questions!

(Oh, and the reason that one question was removed?  The single paragraph the question was related to was also removed from the content of Appendix A. It had something to do with a specific toolkit used for project management - I think they removed it so the chapter remained focused on concepts.)

I brought my findings to the instructor of course. He quickly expressed some concern about how these changes might affect my ability to successfully complete the on-computer final exam for the course, given that he knew it, too, had not been changed to match the fourth edition. He said he'd contact TPTB and have them confirm that there shouldn't be any questions in the exam that I wouldn't be able to answer based on using the fourth edition... 

Whoo-boy.  Fun, fun, fun.

This topic is definitely "TO BE CONTINUED"

:-j(enni)

And so ends my first week as a Programmer Analyst/Web Developer student.

All in all, it's been a good week.  I completed the first module, which was on Project Management tools and techniques, and finished the first course project which was based on it.  (This was all about creating and maintaining PERT charts, Gantt charts and doing Economic Feasibility analysis - NPV, Payback Period and ROI calculations - using standrad tools like MS Project, MS Visio, and MS Excel {ho hum}.) The next course project, which is a longer, multi-day assignment, won't be until closer to the end of this three week course.

That's so Jenni...

Projects must be handed in with a title page, a project description and a project conclusion about what was learned.  The instructor had created an MS Word template for the title page which he pointed me at.  It was nicely laid out - there were two lines, one for the course name, one for the project name, centred horizontally with the first line located about 1/3rd the way from the top and the second line at about the half-way mark.  There was a nicely formatted table at the bottom for student name, instructor name, student number, and project start and end dates, and the whole page was surrounded by a nice border.

All very nice ... but a total MS Word hack job! "Normal" style was used on all lines, with customized formatting for size and style (bold/italic) rather than using title-page specific styles. Multiple paragraphs were used to place vertical space between elements rather than adjusting the paragraph style with appropriate amounts of preceding and following space. All the regions for adding text assumed "type here" - that is, it didn't take advantage of document automation. Plus it was just a title page so, because there was a border around the page, you couldn't just add a page break and start typing to create a "normal" page for your summary and conclusion text.

So, what did I do, I with my expert level of MS Word knowledge? I revamped the whole thing of course! I created new styles. I replaced text with document automation fields where it made sense (e.g., using Title, Subtitle and Author fields). I inserted a section break and defined the second section with standard document formatting and included placeholder text for the project description and project conclusion.  It really turned out quite nicely - the instructor even asked for a copy. ;-)

Right now I'm reviewing the details about some UML diagrams covered in earlier chapters that aren't covered in this course because they were covered in the "Level 1" course (specifically Activity Diagrams and Class Diagrams for the Domain Model).  This is because the next module is focused on a chapter in the book titled "The Object-Oriented Approach to Requirements" which goes into great detail about Use Cases, System Sequence Diagrams, and State Machine Diagrams.  Although I've never actually had to use these tools in my career, I've seen them and know the basics, so I don't expect this next module to be all that much harder than the last. More homework though - making diagrams can be quite time consuming. :P

That's it for today.

:-j(enni)

(OR: Day 1 at CDI College)

Nice school, nice people, nice instructors.  Too bad I wasn't in the system yet when I got there so spent the first hour (8:30a - 9:30a) sitting around waiting for someone to get into the office and then spend another hour getting everything all worked out.  I did eventually start on my first course - "System Analysis and Design, Level 2" (SD2E) - and I'm hoping that means the comedy of errors has ended.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to fly through the first part of this program - I got an outline of the previous course (SD1E) so I could review the chapters in the text book that would have been covered, just to make sure I was familiar with things like the case study used throughout.  According to the SD1E outline students are expected to take four days at 5 hours per day to read the first four chapters.  I'm already half way through chapter three and I only reviewed for three hours - less, actually, as I spent 15 minutes in the kitchen making some tea around 11:30a!

What sucks is that, in a "normal" situation (i.e., one where I was paying my own way) I could take advantage of my reading and learning speed to actually get through the program faster, but because my tuition is being paid by the government I'll probably have to drag things out to the originally specified duration (The government only allows a maximum of 20% of the program's time as a practicum and the courses I'm scheduled for is almost at the minimum for the allocated 4 week practicum. {sigh}

There is one important thing I need to do - get an official transcript from SFU so I can get official credit for the courses I'm not taking because I took something equivalent at SFU. I also need to challenge a few other courses I'm not taking which I never covered at school but really don't need to take as a result of real-world experience (e.g., I certainly don't need to take "Basic HTML" :-P). If I do this, I will earn a Diploma at the end of the program. If I don't, I'll just get a certificate saying I completed such and such courses.  I don't really need to get the diploma given that I already have my BASc, but it's kind of nice to be able to hang another framed piece of formal parchment on the wall. ;-)

Could have been a worse first day I suppose... They could have told me that they had no record of my registration at all! Here's hoping things improve dramatically over the following days and weeks. Keep your eye on my space - I intend to keep posting as things progress.

:-j(enni)

I thoroughly enjoyed VCON this year.  I ran my D&D Duels event for the second year running and had a 40% improvement in the number of participants (up to 7 from 5 last year), including two people who came back from the previous year. One of the best things was  that Jason Nelson (a Top-4 contestant in Paizo's first RPG Superstar contest) who was at the convention as an invited panelist registered as a participant and, in fact, won the tournament.

The tournament itself went well and fun was had by all. The best quote of the night came right at the end and was as follows:

“Nothing is funnier than a raven familiar grappling a tentacled toad familiar over ownership of a flag.”

I thought the dealer’s room was awesome this year – there was so much stuff I would have bought if I only had a large enough wad of (read as: any) discretionary funds.

The artist guest of honour was wonderful, especially her presentation for kids “The care and feeding of your BRAIN,” where she brought small plaster brains, mini pompoms, coloured pipe cleaners and other gewgaws and let kids make a brain-creature.  (She likes to use brains in her artwork - see "The Naked Truth" and "Mind Your Soup" at her online gallery).  I also discovered that, seen in it’s native 3D form, many of her sculptures were quite wondrous and very charming, unlike the rather disturbing or creepy vibe I tended to get from the 2D form of a photograph (keep this in mind when you view her galleries).  I also gained a great appreciation for the work of her colleague Benton Warren that he also had on display – there was this one “magical box” (it was titled “Ooops”) which showed a flower with a small figure over it from one angle and a closed up flower with no figure visible from another angle (it used a tricky mirror illusion to make it look like the actual contents of the box changed depending on where you viewed it from.  I should have taken a photograph of it, but didn't even think about that until after the art gallery had closed (If I’d only had a spare $600....).

This was my 10 year old son Nathan’s first VCON and he really had a great time.  He really liked the Lego table in the games room and was quite disappointed when it was only available on Friday. He made quite a few friends in the KidCon room and was really pleased to get so many compliments on his Elf Ranger costume (everyone loved that he had elf ears on) which will also be his hallowe'en costume this year.  We were also able to get to the Saturday night Dance Party for a while and he had a blast getting his groove on out on the dance floor (he simultaneously entertained many of the other guests who marvelled at his youthful abandon and energy). He was very sad when we had to leave after only a short time at the "post convention" Dead Dog Party and I’m quite sure he’ll be looking forward to next year.

I expect to get photos from the con and maybe even some comments I can quote on the web site in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled to find out what others thought.

:-j(enni)
aka: VCON 33 Webmaster