As the summer term draws to an end, it\u2019s a good idea to summarise what it was like for me. This time was exceptional since it was my first encounter with full remote studying (apart from pre-pandemic self-learning episodes with text tutorials and YouTube educational videos).<\/p>\n
Compared to autumn and spring terms, the number of modules for second year computing students was much smaller. We only had to work on a group project and the introduction to law module.<\/p>\n
The project was called \u201cDesigning for Real People\u201d (DRP). In groups of 4, we had to create a web or mobile application that solved a real-world problem. We were required to pick several target users outside of our team and be in touch with them throughout the entire project development time in order to get feedback on software we were making. This wasn\u2019t an easy task during the pandemic! Thankfully, my teammate used his connections and therefore managed to get enough people to talk to \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
There was also the law module, but it was nothing too complicated. Just 4 hours of lectures about copyright, contracts and GDPR + a small piece of coursework which counted as a part of the DRP project grade.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t as hard as it seemed to be. All lecture recordings were available on Panopto and there were lab\/clinic\/Q&A sessions delivered on either Microsoft Teams<\/a> or Zoom<\/a>. Within our group, we held audio meetings nearly every day on Teams, chatted using both Teams and Facebook and communicated with the users and project markers on Zoom. We didn’t have any time zone problems as we were located in three adjacent time zones, including the UK one.<\/p>\n There were also two larger presentation sessions on Zoom and these went almost<\/strong> flawlessly. Why almost? In the middle of some other group\u2019s presentation, I unmuted my microphone by accident. Oops! Luckily, this unwanted interruption lasted only a few seconds.<\/p>\nThe end<\/h2>\n