Final Report 2008/2009
One semester at Oxford Brookes University
Host institution: Oxford Brookes University
Duration of stay: 13/09/2008 – 21/12/2008
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Table of Contents
1
City, Country and People ................................................................................................................. 3
2
Social Integration............................................................................................................................. 3
3
Accommodation .............................................................................................................................. 3
4
Money.............................................................................................................................................. 4
4.1
Money spent during the semester abroad.............................................................................. 4
4.2
Additional Fees (non-recurrent) .............................................................................................. 4
5
Miscellaneous (insurance, visa)....................................................................................................... 4
6
Description of the Host University .................................................................................................. 4
7
Enrolment ........................................................................................................................................ 5
8
Academic Year ................................................................................................................................. 5
9
Offered Courses and Chosen Modules ............................................................................................ 5
9.1
The Human Computer Interface.............................................................................................. 5
9.2
Computer Networks ................................................................................................................ 6
9.3
Multimedia Applications Design.............................................................................................. 6
9.4
Web Design.............................................................................................................................. 7
10
Credits related to modules and study workload ......................................................................... 7
11
Marking System ........................................................................................................................... 8
12
Academic Advice ......................................................................................................................... 8
13
Summary...................................................................................................................................... 8
14
Other things you should know... ................................................................................................. 8
15
Semester Dates............................................................................................................................ 9
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1 City, Country and People
Oxford is quite a nice city about one and a half hours away from London. It is definitely worth coming
and seeing Oxford and all its different places of interest. You can have a look at Christ Church which
was used for a replica for Harry Potter’s Dining Hall, Oxford Castle, Oxford University and South Park,
a very huge park close to the centre of Oxford where lots of people love to spend time to relax, play
outside or go for a gentle jog through it.
Oxford is definitely a place for students as there are plenty of them from both Oxford University and
Brookes University. English people are quite proud of being students and education rates really high
compared to other countries. There is quite a big gap between people having a degree and those
who have not. It is much more likely for former students to get a good and well-paid job as it is for
other people.
There are quite a lot of bars, clubs and pubs offering student specials many times a week which
encourages students to go out rather often.
People are quite nice, polite and obliging and it is relatively easy to make friends even for foreign
students. Of course it depends on your own personality whether you want to get in contact with
native students or if you prefer to stay in your room trying not to meet other people.
I think it was definitely a good choice to choose Oxford for my semester abroad as there is everything
a student needs.
2 Social Integration
Social integration for me personally was really easy but it definitely depends on your character. From
the first moment on I was trying to get to know as many native English speakers as possible and I
avoided speaking my first language as often as I could.
I rarely went out with other international students during the first couple of weeks and after a very
short time my English mates accepted me as their half-English mate. Sure, most of the people I met
were exchange students and I went to a lot of parties organized by and for international students,
but I was still attempting to improve my language skills by talking to native English speaking people.
3 Accommodation
There are a lot of different student halls at Oxford Brookes University and I was staying in Clive Booth
Hall. In my personal opinion this is the best student accommodation since it is really close to the city
centre and at the same time placed directly on Headington Campus where quite a lot of lectures and
practicals took place. It certainly depends on the course because for all of my lectures I had to do a
25-minutes trip to Wheatley Campus by bus.
The first impression of my room was quite shocking since it was really tiny and not very pleasing but
clean and nice though. Clive Booth Hall consists of many different blocks, each named with a
particular single letter. These blocks have a different number of flats, some of which are ensuite,
some non-ensuite. I was living in G2 together with five other guys. We all had one shared bathroom,
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one toilet and a kitchen, which was cleaned by the Hall staff. For your own room you are responsible
by yourself.
Despite some minor troubles to find room to dry my clothes (there are of course dryers available), I
quickly got used to living in my tiny room because apart from sleeping and doing some coursework, I
was not really staying in my room.
4 Money
4.1 Money spent during the semester abroad
Monthly fees
For accommodation
For food
For travelling
For books, copies
For health insurance
For other things
€ 1300.€ 600.- per month
€ 270.- per month
€ 0.- per month
€ 50.- per month
€ 0.- per month
€ 380.- per month
4.2 Additional Fees (non-recurrent)
Vaccination and medical treatment
Visa
Travelling expenses
Other fees
- Trip to London
- Bike
- Memberships (sport clubs)
- Luggage (back home per UPS)
€0
€0
€ 380.€ 20.€ 60.€ 40.€ 150.-
5 Miscellaneous (insurance, visa)
Since it was an exchange semester within the European Union it was relatively easy to stay in
England. Apart from a massive queue at London Heathrow Airport for the passport control I did not
have any troubles concerning my visa.
As for the insurance, I signed up for a kind of student insurance during freshers week, promoted by
some people on the Campus. This insurance covered all my personal belongings which were insured
against fire, theft, loss or damage. There was another special part for electronic devices for which I
had to pay separately (laptop, external hard drive and camera).
6 Description of the Host University
Oxford Brookes University consists of several different campuses spread all over the city. There is
Headington Campus and Gipsy Lane Campus, where a lot of modules are held, Wheatley Campus and
Harcourt Hill Campus. Additionally there are many student halls close to the campuses. Most of the
students were living in Clive Booth Hall, which is on Headington Campus, some others at Wheatley or
Marston Road site. In my personal opinion Clive Booth is the best place to live as there are plenty of
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students close to each other. It is close to the city centre as well and only a five-minutes-walk away
from Gipsy Lane and the bus stations to the city, to London and to the airport shuttle service.
The campuses are nice and pleasing, lecture rooms are compared to JKU quite small and similar to
class rooms in schools. Food courts are available on nearly each campus where you can either sit in
and have lunch or take away sandwiches and other snacks.
There are a lot of sport facilities directly on the campus with hockey fields, a sports hall for
badminton, basketball, climbing and lots of other sports you can sign up during sports fair in the first
couple of days.
7 Enrolment
The enrolment took place on Monday, September 15 in a massive hall on Gipsy Lane Campus. It took
me ages to go through all the procedures required for first year students but it was quite easy and
straightforward.
We had to fill in a sheet with some medical stuff and listen to a lot of induction lectures about
student’s life, working with computers, library access and we got plenty more useful information.
8 Academic Year
The academic year at Oxford Brookes University is divided in two semesters, the first one starts in
September and ends in December, the second one is from February until May.
Every semester consists of 12 weeks for lectures and practicals and an additional week 13 where all
the written exams take place. All the deadlines for different courseworks have a week number to be
handed in.
9 Offered Courses and Chosen Modules
Since I am nearly at the end of my bachelor’s degree I chose four modules at Oxford Brookes
University to be counted against non-compulsory modules of my master’s degree. Therefore I
selected modules where I was interested in or where I wanted to increase my knowledge about. All
of them were undergraduate modules for students in their final year of the bachelor’s course.
To be honest the level of some lectures is much lower than at Johannes Kepler University, and
although it was final year modules we did not really cover sophisticated or detailed topics in any
lecture. Furthermore it is not that important to go to lectures than it is at home and it is no problem
to study the lecture slides that are provided online at home.
I chose the following modules during my exchange period at Oxford Brookes University:
9.1 The Human Computer Interface
This module mainly covered user interface design. We were talking about good and bad design
aspects and some main points how to improve usability and accessibility for users.
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The lecture was easy to understand and comprehensible but a bit boring though. The practical was
pretty much useless because it just repeated the stuff covered in the lecture before and gave an
introduction to drag-and-drop user interface design with Delphi 7.
The final marks consisted of 100% coursework divided in two parts. The first one (50%) was an online
multiple choice test, which was not too easy because of a weird marking scheme. Students were
marked on how much better their answers were compared to a person who just flips a coin to tick an
answer by chance. The second part of the coursework was a groupwork. Students had to organize
themselves in groups of four people to develop and implement an interface for a touchscreen in a
wildlife park with Delphi 7 until the end of the semester.
This design process had to include user requirement, different prototypes based on user feedback,
evaluation processes, all to be put together in a massive final report which was marked as well. The
user interface was to be presented in a final meeting between all the group members and the
lecturer.
To sum it up it was definitely a good experience working together with other people and a good
example for software development in future professional life.
9.2 Computer Networks
This module gave a very basic introduction to computer networks and mainly covered the different
layers of the OSI reference model. Surprisingly it was the first time for all the final year students at
Brookes to be confronted with network issues and therefore not very intellectually demanding for a
computing student in his 7th semester at JKU.
Despite that fact both the lecture and the practical were really useful and interesting, based on
‚Computer Networks’ by Andrew Tanenbaum. The lecturer really tried to teach comprehensible and
coherent topics and during the practicals it was possible to ask questions or discuss older exam
questions in small groups.
The final mark was based on a written exam in the last week (70%) and some small parts of
coursework. We were supposed to hand in three different tutorials (each worth 5%) and to hold a
poster presentation talking about any topic related to computer networks in groups of three.
Although I do not know my final mark I was quite lucky to work with two reliable English students
and since the 30% coursework is an easy opportunity to gain marks, it is relatively easy to achieve a
good mark in the end.
Although this module did not cover any new topics I really enjoyed going to the lectures as it was
well-structured, interesting and a good opportunity to remember myself to all the important issues
in computer networks.
9.3 Multimedia Applications Design
This module dealt with different media formats and several ways how to embed all the stuff in an
HTML website. The lecture itself was not very interesting and boring most of the time, lecture slides
very detailed and stuffed. It was definitely enough to study the slides at home, but some of the
practicals were quite useful, although depending on the personal experience and knowledge about
CSS, SMIL, Flash, MIDI, MP3, Photoshop and HTML.
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At the end of the module we had to present a website of a fictitious restaurant mounted on a
Brookes server including picture galleries, audio commentary, video footage, self recorded and
created music. This site was to convince people to come to the restaurant and to be as close related
to the type of restaurant and the food as possible.
This coursework was quite time consuming but I was really lucky again to find a reliable partner and
since we had started early it was not that stressful in the end.
I liked designing the webpage but there was some useless stuff we had to include for example a SMIL
animation, which is rarely used on websites on the Internet.
9.4 Web Design
In my personal opinion this module was really interesting as well. It was about web design with
XHTML strict, a very strict form of HTML, where all the information about the layout is to be provided
in an external style sheet.
The lecture itself was well-structured, the practicals always related to the topic covered in the lecture
before. The lecturer tried to explain everything really well and comprehensibly to make it easier for
students to apply it to the coursework.
The coursework consisted of two main parts. For the first 30% of the final mark we had to write a
critical review on a website found on the Internet, discussing if it was good or bad design according
to the HTML source code. Any design errors or possible improvements had to be included in our
essay, which was to be handed in after the first couple of weeks. For the rest of the semester we had
to re-implement and re-design the webpage discussed in our essay in valid XHTML with a valid and
well-commented CSS. Additionally we were supposed to hand in a short journal about the work
undertaken including a schedule, screenshots of the W3C validation runs and problems encountered
as well as the possible solutions.
The main focus was to have valid XHTML with perfect accessibility and to ensure browser
compatibility.
I really enjoyed working on the HTML code to re-design the page, although it was rather pointless to
record all the work in a journal which was a bit annoying sometimes. To sum it up it was a good
experience to get familiar with CSS because it is becoming more and more important to provide valid
and W3C proved web pages on the Internet.
10 Credits related to modules and study workload
Comparing to the credits at JKU students at Brookes get more credits for a module than in Austria.
The total study workload per semester was much less as that was I was used to from home. But it is
surprisingly hard to achieve good marks, although the first impression of the English marking system
seems to be quite ridiculous and easy for all the other international students.
Due to the fact that I am nearly at the end of my bachelor’s degree I had a lot of foreknowledge
which made further readings at home nearly unnecessary.
A lecture (2 hours per week) and the practical (1 hour) is worth 7.5 ECTS but one hour is 60 minutes
and not 45 minutes like at JKU.
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11 Marking System
As mentioned above the marking system seems to be quite easy at the beginning. To get an ‘A’,
which is the highest mark, you only need 70%, the problem is that the highest scores students
normally achieve at the university are about 85%. This means that you still have to work reasonably
hard to get an ‘A’ in the end.
The good thing is that it is – in my personal opinion – nearly impossible to fail a module because you
normally need either 30% or 40% to pass.
12 Academic Advice
During week 0 (Freshers Week), every single Fresher gets his own personal tutor during the
enrolment. This is to have a person you can talk to or meet if you have any academic questions or
problems related to any coursework or other university stuff.
For me personally it was rather pointless to have my own tutor as I was not used to that from my
home university and therefore never asked him anything.
Furthermore during week 4 and week 8 clinic and revision lectures are held to repeat the topics
covered during the three weeks before which is quite useful if you have missed a lecture for any
reason. It is even possible to make an appointment with the lecturer to come and see him in his
office if you have any particular queries.
13 Summary
It was definitely worth it! To be honest I would highly recommend spending at least one semester
abroad to every student I know. There is nothing better than meeting a lot of other people from all
over the world, finding friends from other countries, experiencing another culture and improving
language skills. So far it was definitely the best and most enjoyable semester in my life and I would
really like to go back in February to spend a second semester at Brookes.
14 Other things you should know...
During the first week in England you should make sure to be on Facebook because it is THE social
network where a lot of information about parties, special student offers and events is provided and it
makes it a lot easier to remember names ;)
Nearly every English student in on Facebook and especially if you do not have an English mobile
phone number in the first couple of days, it is a perfect alternative to stay in contact with other
students you have just met. And believe me, during the first week you will shake hundreds of hands.
Secondly – and I am sure you know that – cars are driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the street, which I
have not understood within three months ;)
English students go out at least three times a week and normally start in the late afternoon to
predrink. Bars and pubs in England close at about midnight, sometimes even before but there are
some clubs that are open until two or three o’clock in the morning.
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English students do not wear jackets or jumpers when they go out. It is normal to see girls in skirts
and tops and guys with flip-flops next to international students wearing gloves and a scarf.
15 Semester Dates
Enrolment and induction week:
Semester 1:
Semester 2
Easter break:
15/09/2008 – 19/09/2008
22/09/2008 – 19/12/2008
02/02/2009 – 22/05/2009
06/04/2009 – 17/04/2009
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