Studying at UoPeople
I’ve been studying at University of the People(UoPeople) from Japan since April 2020.
I major Computer Science(CS), but before studying CS at UoPeople, I have to pass an English course to prove my English proficiency :) So, I had been studying at the course from April to June.
I’ve been working as a web developer for about 15 years and am now working as a front-end developer for a company and a front-end advisor for another company. Both jobs are very exciting, and I enjoy my jobs at the companies even though it’s a bit busy.
In personal, I have two children, so I spend my weekends with my family. So I don’t have enough time to study for a university. However, I decided to study at the university. Why? Here is the story.
The Motivation
I’ve been studying web application development on my own, which is so much fun, but there are many topics I have to study, and it is very hard to cover all of them. To study fundamental topics for system development, I’ve studied and passed some tests that IPA (Information-technology Promotion Agency) provides. The things I’ve learned through studying for the tests are not connected to my jobs directly, but the knowledge sometimes helps me when I tried to study new topics.
But the study covered only a few CS topics, so I felt that I want to study more CS topics. But I cannot stop working to study them at a university because I have family and have to provide for them. So I looked for universities to provide a CS course as an online degree to study CS while working for companies as the same as before, and then I found a few universities in Japan. But, I didn’t choose the universities. Why?
In addition to CS, English is an important topic for me because it is arguably a requirement in software industries. If I want to communicate with developers who maintain OSS libraries or want to send a patch to OSS libraries, I have to communicate with developers in English. To improve my English skills, I try to use English in my life as possible as I can. In the perspective, I think learning CS in English would make sense, so I looked for universities that provide CS as an online degree. As a result, I’ve found UoPeople through watching a TED talk.
This is what I want! UoPeople provides an online course for a CS degree with very cheap cost.
> a bachelor degree can be completed in 4 years for $4,060
Getting a CS degree is not a purpose for me, but it will motivate me through the long term for the study. Nowadays, there are many great resources to learn CS for free. For example, CS 253 Web Security is a great class to study how the web works from the perspective of security, and Khan Academy has a CS course to learn algorithms, cryptography, and so on.
But I want to learn CS with a curriculum and thought that a university is the best place to achieve it. Anyway, learning computer science is so much fun :) This is my main motivation.
The University of the People
UoPeople is an online university, so the classes, including exams, are entirely online, which means we can learn anywhere and anytime. To get a grade, we have to study and hand in assignments for about nine weeks. According to their website, we have to study at least15–17 hours per week on each course, which means that if you study only on weekdays, you have to study at least 3 hours every weekday.
> A student should expect to spend at least 15–17 hours per week on each course. This includes readings, research work, writing, project work, etc.
In the last term, I took only one course in the term, so I’ll share with you about my experiences in the class, which is ENGL0101.
English Course ENGL0101
If you have not earned a diploma from an accredited English institution or don’t meet the qualification of some tests like TOEFL, you have to take an English class before studying at UoPeople.
I have a score of TOEIC, but it is not on the list even though Eiken(英検) is included in the list. I considered taking a test of Duolingo because it doesn’t require so much time for a test like TOEFL. But I didn’t take the test and decided to take the English course because I’d like to study English not only CS, so it was a good opportunity for me.
You can see the curriculum for the class at the following.
I cannot share the details of the class. In this class, I’ve read stories, reviewed them, discussed with classmates, assessed peer’s assignment, and taken a self-quiz each week. Especially, I was struggled to read literature because what I read regularly is about technology, which many of my vocabularies are from the technology area. Moreover, literature is usually vaguer than articles about technologies, so I had to take much time to understand the story of literature.
Through this class, I realized that my vocabularies are less than other classmates, so I feel that I have to read books from various categories written in English.
But the hardest part of taking the class is to keep studying for nine weeks. I planed to study at weekends (Fri 〜 Sun) because I might not be able to use weekdays for the study. So I studied for about five hours at weekends during the term. But it was very tough because I have to play with children at weekends. So my study time was after having been playing with them. In addition to that, keeping studying nine weeks was very difficult because it is a very long term and some weekends had no time for the study because I was very busy, or tired. Actually, the last few weeks of the term were very hard to keep my motivation.
Final Exam with Proctor
The class has a final exam that requires a proctor. We can choose an online proctor or offline proctor. I don’t have any people who can be the proctor, so I chose an online proctor. We can get a proctor at the service, ProctorU.
- https://www.proctoru.com/
Of course, this was the first time I do a test online with a proctor, which was a very strange experience. To take the final exam, we must secure a room that anyone cannot enter and has a clean desk. Before taking the test, I connected to a proctor and had to prove that my environment fulfills the test’s requirement. To do it, I had to follow the proctor’s instructions, which are hiding an external display, putting away my mobile phone, and showing my entire room to the proctor using a web camera on my laptop.
Of course, these instructions were in English, so I had to communicate with the proctor in English. Speaking in English is not necessary at UoPeople because most of the activities are reading and writing. But a final exam with a proctor is a rare case that we have to speak and listen in English.
Next, I had to allow the proctor to operate on my laptop. After I allowed this, the proctor closed applications and browser tabs that not required for the exam, which was a weird experience that my laptop is controlled remotely.
After I finished the ready to take exam, I can start the exam. I took the test on an external site, which seemed to be a system of Oxford. The system was very poor. For example, it seemed not to allow us to go back to previous questions to answer them again. I didn’t know the system, so I wasted about 30 minutes because I cannot back to previous questions. I usually finish answering all questions as soon as possible and then re-answer questions carefully…
The worst experience was at the time I’ve just finished the exam. I followed the instruction on the page and clicked the “close the window” button, but after that, the page suddenly showed a login page without any feedbacks for the final exam; there is no message to tell whether the submission was successful or not. So I asked the proctor, and the proctor said that you had finished the exam. It almost took a week to be able to see the result of the final exam, so I spent days while worrying about that.
Fortunately, I have succeeded in submitting the final exam and passed the course!
But according to the UoPeople staff, it is only for the final exam for English class, the other tests are taken on the UoPeople website, which is called Moodle. So be careful when you take the final exam for the English course.
The Next
This is just a start-line of studying CS, and the next term is starting the next weekend; I will take two courses, which are a CS course and a general course, so I would have to study much more than the previous term, but I’m very excited!
