Recently, I’ve been thinking about making a return to studies in a more formal fashion. In particular, I’m thinking of studying a Computing course with the Open University. The one which I’ve found which I think would work for me is MSc in Computing (Software Engineering).
This course breaks down into several modules, but quite a few of them look like they’d be of interest to me, particularly:
- M813 - Software Development
- M814 - Software Engineering
- M815 - Project Management
- M816 - Data Management
After this, there is a choice of either a research module, or a researching in context module along with another module. Both of these require projects to be completed, but they are different in their approach. The research module is more of a traditional research project, whereas the researching in context module is more of a project which is based on a real world problem.
There is also a short course that they recommend before starting postgraduate studies, which I’ve already started, and that is Succeeding in postgraduate study. So far, this is quite an interesting course, but by its nature, it’s very general, and not specific to any particular subject. It’s also a very short course in comparison to the full modules - it’s only 24 hours of study, whereas the full modules are a lot longer.
The full course for the MSc would probably take me 3 years to complete, so this isn’t a short endevour, but it is something which I’ll be doing at the same time as working full time. Based on my research so far, it should look at somewhere between 15 and 20 hours of study per week, which is a lot, especially while working, but it’s doable.
Part of my reasoning for looking into this is that I never finished by BSc when I was at university - I studied for a number of years, but I ended up having to leave because of personal reasons. Now that I’m older, more settled, and in a stable situation, I’m thinking that it might be a good time to go back to studying.
I could’ve been looking at going back to do a BSc, however, because of the amount of time that’s passed since then, I’ve actually learnt a lot of the material which would be covered in a BSc, so I think that I’d be better off going straight into an MSc. This would also mean that the qualification would be more applicable to where I am now, where I want to be in the future, and (happily for me) it would also be a shorter course.
Not having this kind of qualification has held me back a times in pursuing certain roles, and it would be good for me to avoid this issue in the future. While I don’t expect to need this in the near future, it would avoid those kinds of problems in the future.