Alrighty, here's a little review of what happened in the 2010 course. Not exactly a hard course; if you're half decent with computers and have a good memory, then you'll do fine. I managed to get a 12 in it; just make sure you don't take it too lightly cause it's a "computer course".
Course Breakdown:
Test 1: 25%
Test 2: 25%
Exam: 50%
Tutorials: 0%
Test 1
written by the first prof, Brian Detlor. It consisted of Excel and hardware/software. To be honest, this was the easiest exam, as I didn't even study for it and managed a 94. There was practice quizzes on nelson too for hardware/software, which helped a lot. Just read the parts in the book that emphasize his slides, and you'll definitely do amazing. Take some notes too, for sure. It didn't really ask any key stroke/mouse click questions. There were a few "random fact" questions, e.g one was "Who created Linux?" and this can all be known by just doing the practice quizzes or what not. The average on the exam was a 61-63%, and it was bellcurved to a 67-69%. Consisted of 50 questions. T/F & M/C
Test 2
Now Anthony Hurst comes, where imo the course requires much more effort than before, cause you not only have to know things ONLY discussed in lectures, but you have to memorize loads of details from the textbook, his slides, lectures, keystrokes/mouse clicks etc. The second test included: Page Design, MS Word, XHTML, HTML, and the internet. Questions here can be like "what font size is heading 3?" and "How many inches in this point size?" Typically, his tests incorporate examples showed in the book (read the book and remember every little detail!), various concepts from his slides, and other things he discusses in lectures. Consisted of 60 questions, with 20 T/F or so I believe and 40 M/C. (+-2) Average on this exam was a 61-63%, was also bell curved up. Due to many tricky T/F questions and being ignorant and not reading them carefully, I only managed an 84% here. (50/60)
Final Exam
The level of difficulty was harder than both midterms, for sure. I managed to somehow get over 90% on it, which surprised me cause many Access questions were tricky. This exam consisted of 30 T/F and 70 MC.
Breakdown:
10% database terminology, concepts, and implementation
40% Access terms, tasks, and navigation details
40% XHTML, internet, and CSS
10% Page design and Word
Basically, for the Access stuff, he gave us a bunch of definitions that weren't learned in class, weren't in the book, weren't discussed in lectures... or anywhere. You basically had to research these terms on your own, but actually somebody posted a great link with certain sections of the full nelson book online, which described these various terms. Many people complained about the Access stuff, saying that they didn't have it, and thinking that's a reasonable alibi for doing bad on the exam. Honestly, we knew way before the exam what was going to be on it, and it's your fault if you weren't prepared and responsible enough to have access to... Access. CSS/XHTML stuff was terribly easy, many other people in the class thought so too. Basically, know Access in and out, play with it a lot, I studied for a couple days for this (not 24/7, but I definitely practiced a lot with Access cause it was terribly confusing at first... but I got to know it inside out) Average was 61%, bellcurved to 67%.
Tutorials: Useless, imo. Absolutely useless. I only attended one tutorial and most of the time was spent with people having no idea what they were doing. Just do the tutorials in the book on your own... it gives you more time to learn at your pace.
