Marissa Lively Tube wrote: » When I did it, it was monday,wednesday and every saturday. It was a lot of work for a non techie but I got a 2.1 A lot of us went on to further study. There's a good group of us doing the Postgrad Dip in Cloud Computing at the NCI. hope to be on target for a 2.2. Others went on to do other courses elsewhere. Some got jobs. One girl did very well and is a ruby programmer but she did the work on the course to get there. I'm doing an internship in cloud services to give me the experience I need with the course.And after 2 years of study, I'm considering something else while I can take advantage of springboard. I'm looking at computer forensics. You have upskilled use it to get a job and not take up limited places... If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
beg55 wrote: » Hi I am interested in doing the Bsc In ITB. You seem to have done a couple of courses already and have upskilled and have an internship also. Surely the springboard courses are for someone like me who has not done any courses yet. What happens if there are limited places and I don't get on the course because someone like you who already has had a number of opportunities gets 'my' place. Is that fair ??? BTW good luck with the internship. I hope it leads to a job so your so busy you don't need to do another course... your third...
Marissa Lively Tube wrote: » From experience of Springboard there is a drop out of at least 60% by the end of the course, many just couldn't hack it, wouldn't put in the work or realised the course wasn't what they wanted to do.
donegal11 wrote: » Was the dropout really that high, was there any intervention on the college to support struggling applicants such extra tutorials?
Marissa Lively Tube wrote: » There was a high drop out rate. Part of it was due to people signing up for the wrong course and the other part was that people with no technical background weren't willing to put the work in to do the course work. There was a lot of coding on both courses which was a steep learning curve particularly for non techies. How much you learn is dependent on how much time you put into it. There is support in the labs but its limited. Its a level 8 course and as such requires a lot of self learning. Level 9 (which I'm doing now) requires a lot more work. It wouldn't be worth getting otherwise.
bazpaul1 wrote: » Interesting...good to know! I'm actually a techie, but am scared (or disinterested) in too much coding Let me ask - do you think the course gave you the skills to set up your own "proper" website. By proper I mean coding everything from scratch with no CMS's, your own SQL and PHP calls? I would be interested in possibly setting up a web business after the course and the NCI prospectus says that the course is geared towards this.
jax700303 wrote: » Hi Guys, I have been offered a place in this course as well as in the FAS software developer, which one do you reckon is the best one? and the one that will give me a fair chance to get into the IT industry, I have a background in hospitality and retail and have done the FAS web page design course a few years back.
Stamply wrote: » Both courses will be very tough for you with your background. The web design one will be of little or no use. Before you start either go to this page:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books and read all of the books on data structures and algorithms. If you want a job in software then this is what you must do prior to starting these courses. The number of people who get jobs in these courses in minimal. But the colleges will allow people into masters programmes afterwards to beef up the numbers in order to keep the gravy train going. They are directly paid by the government and as institutions have little ability to train large numbers of people quickly to industry standard employable levels. The government puts pressure on companies to take on students in these courses as interns, but these internships don't teach much either, they usually just give them administrative repetitive work. It takes a lot of resources to train an intern and you only really get that if you're lucky enough to spark the attention of a small company with time to mentor you and tell you what to study after the course. They expect your loyalty afterward, but rarely tie you into contracts, like Ericsson or large companies do. The best advice is, don't touch a programming language for between two weeks and two months, depending upon your proficiency in Maths and the time you can dedicate daily. Then in the course you'll have a better background to actually code. In these courses they migrate you to frameworks quickly, which makes it feel like you're doing something, but is really a load of bollox because the understanding you gain of the core language - like Ruby in Ruby on Rails or Java in Groovy on Grails - is limited. After studying Data Structures and Algorithms focus on a language, using online books, tutorials and learning tools online - like tryruby.org or Codecademy.com - and then in 6 months start a course. Either FAS or the college will do. It really doesn't matter as long as you have done the work prior to starting the course. I started another thread last week looking for books for learning Data Structures & Algorithms, got a great response, find that thread. Follow that advice and you'll increase you chances of getting a job tenfold. This is coming from someone who was in your position and is in NCI doing a conversion course with a large network of friends and colleagues in software.
Marissa Lively Tube wrote: » Words fail me after reading this diatribe.. Having done both the H.Dip and Postgrad in Cloud at the NCI, I've never read such nonsense. Granted there is a high dropout rate. Part of it is because its free and people aren't out of pocket leaving. For most its a case that they don't want to do so much programing, for others, they just couldn't be bothered doing the work necessary to complete the course. For those who want to do programing and do the extra work there are jobs. One friend off the H.Dip is now a Ruby programmer and doing well.For others who dont want to spend our lives programing, there are other jobs in IT where having a knowledge of the various languages lets us talk to developers with knowledge of what they are talking about. Having had 20 years moving trucks, I completed both courses and didn't need to spend 6 months looking at algorythms or data structures. You will get out of the course as much as you put in. Its a steep learning curve but at level 8 what do you expect.The H.Dip is a conversion course to turn non-techies into techies. Having completed it, I can say it does exactly what it says on the tin.:D
headbasher wrote: » I have accepted a place on this course and also have a retail background, so i will be in a similar situation. Any success stories from non-techies who have completed the web science level 8 course would be appreciated.
