I studied the TM112 module concurrently with the maths module MU123, though the maths module lasted a little longer than TM112. This wasn’t as hard to balance as you might expect, but there were times when I had to prioritise one module over the other. I’ve now finished both modules, though just recently got my result for TM112 and am happy to say that I earned myself another distinction.
For me, I found it easiest to take advantage of when I had the most free time to get ahead in each module so that I had a study credit (or buffer) in the bank for when I might need to prioritise one module over the other or prioritise some other commitment. The study planner for TM112 recommended a particular part of study for each week, whereas MU123 had two week segments. TM112 is condensed over 6 months rather than 9, so is a bit more intense than MU123, but I found that I could cover a part of TM112 during part of the week and MU123 during the rest. I started with this approach that put me ahead in MU123 first, where I could work on the first assessment and then focus more on TM112 and getting ahead before returning to MU123. Before leaving too long of a gap in MU123, I’d gotten decently ahead in TM112 as well without falling behind in MU123. From that point on, I alternated weeks dedicated to each. From there I was able to keep pace with both and modules and leave some leisure time free too.
However, I also had TM129 starting before the end of both modules. So it was a good thing that I was ahead. It meant I could finish TM112 early (though I had a bit of a crunch near the end to focus on this). That meant sacraficing my lead on MU123, but that was okay. The maths module runs longer and didn’t make all assessments available from the start, so I wouldn’t be able to use the lead I’d gained this soon. TM129, required an initial time investment into getting setup with the Cisco site and used to that different format. So I focused more on that and after my first assessment on TM129 returned focus back to MU123 when the final assessments were available to me and put myself in another crunch to finish that module early too (technically, I still have nearly a week as I write this if I want to make changes to my EMA just now).
Back to TM112, the different themes covered in this module were spreadout through each of the blocks rather than having a block dedicated to each. So I will focust on the themes in this look back rather than the blocks or associated assessments.
This theme covered a range of topics on what makes up information technology. It takes much of what we learned in TM111 and expands upon it.
We cover more on binary and hexadecimal, network architecture, cloud computing and computer hardware. Theme 1 does a decent job expanding on what you’ve learned without being too challenging. The danger is that if you don’t feel challenged, you might get bored. You can remedy this easily by taking your study further than prescribed materials however.
Finally! We get away from the Scratch-based OUBuild to start coding with our keyboards. If you have no prior coding experience, this one might be more challenging for you. I hope you paid attention to the lessons from OUBuild in the last module and I suggest you take some time early on to get to grips with some Python basics until you feel comfortable with the language. Don’t be afraid to ask for help in forums either.
You get to try out and code a really diverse range of scripts/programs written in Python. For example, you will work with data from ONS and process this in Python and you will also work with APIs. You can take this further yourself by combining APIs (there are plenty of free APIs online for various things you can take advantage of for this) and data processing. In the module we worked with APIs to geocode an address and pinpoint it on a map. I took this one further by taking two addresses and calculating the distance between them using the Haversine formula. I also found free-to-use weather APIs and incorporated this too, and explored a few other ideas. The point of this additional exploration was that it allowed me to get more comfortable working with APIs, JSON structured data and elements of Python that I had less experience with.
You are not expected to code anything too complicated for the assessments, but the module will give you a chance to explore some complex Python scripts and write your own.
This theme was largely focused on cybersecurity and cybercrime. It starts with a fictionalised story about a private investigator teaming up with an information security professional to investigate computer crime. The PI learns how to recover data from his new partner, allowing ourselves (the actual students) to take the lessons too. The story is a bit childish and a few people complained about this in the forums, but it did illustrate the process involved in recovering data from main memory and a hard drive with an example of when you might do this.
The rest of the topics on this theme are more direct and do not require a primary school story book to illustrate the point. We learned more on malware, expanding on TM111. This included some examples from real life, including the Stuxnet worm that set back Iran’s nuclear program. We also learned how TOR works, how it was intended and how it has been used both legitimately for privacy and security, and for crime such as dark web marketplaces. Specifically we learned about Dread Pirate Roberts (Ross Ulbricht) and the Silk Road. Far from the childish story about the PI, we went into detail about the market place and Ulbricht’s double life.
Personally, I enjoyed this module – even the childish story in Theme 3. Much of it didn’t feel too challenging, but it also provided plenty of opportunity to find challenge if you are willing to go a little further. A word of warning on going further though, it is easy to fall down a rabbit hole as I did on many occasions. I could get away with this as I had plenty of free time to spare, but it’s a trap that’s easy to fall into. Don’t let the rabbit holes distract you too much from the main course work.
After finishing TM112, I just had a little of MU123 left and most of TM129. After that I will be looking at stage 2 modules.