BSc Computing Honours UNISA

[cguy]

Remember, its all year modules, and you can't take the two compulsory modules at the same time.

Interesting, research methodology in one year, and the report in the next. At UCT we had this all squashed into 1 year. Pretty tight, but a little strange that the first module takes a whole year at UNISA.

 

[BeeDeeM]

Registering for this now. I am going to split it over 2 years because I work full-time and have a small baby. Which modules are the most interesting and/or useful? The COS modules look way more interesting but I am scared I don't have enough maths foundation coming from an Informatics undergrad. Who has taken the COS modules without a computer science undergrad?

 

[Naickej4]

Registering for this now. I am going to split it over 2 years because I work full-time and have a small baby. Which modules are the most interesting and/or useful? The COS modules look way more interesting but I am scared I don't have enough maths foundation coming from an Informatics undergrad. Who has taken the COS modules without a computer science undergrad?

Hello there. Did you manage to finish this course?
How is this course?

 

[whatwhat]

Doing the UNISA honors at the moment and it's really terrible. Just endless reading of research papers and paraphrasing them into your own words to submit as assignments. There is very little info from the lecturers, besides the Ent.Arch class, and you are left to figure out for yourself what they might be asking for.
Assignments don't get marked in time, so when you are submitting your 3rd one you still don't know whether you are on the right track or not as the first two haven't been marked.

Absolute dog show.

 

[Naickej4]

Doing the UNISA honors at the moment and it's really terrible. Just endless reading of research papers and paraphrasing them into your own words to submit as assignments. There is very little info from the lecturers, besides the Ent.Arch class, and you are left to figure out for yourself what they might be asking for.
Assignments don't get marked in time, so when you are submitting your 3rd one you still don't know whether you are on the right track or not as the first two haven't been marked.

Absolute dog show.

Hello, thank you for your honest and valuable feedback as I am contemplating UNISA or UJ, I am busy doing more research and feedback from others before I make a clear cut decision. I heard UJ is very good but I just abit fearful on their 25% lecture rule which has to be made otherwise you have to repeat the module.

Did you write any exams as yet?

 

[whatwhat]

Hello, thank you for your honest and valuable feedback as I am contemplating UNISA or UJ, I am busy doing more research and feedback from others before I make a clear cut decision. I heard UJ is very good but I just abit fearful on their 25% lecture rule which has to be made otherwise you have to repeat the module.

Did you write any exams as yet?

2 of my modules are continuous assessment, so there are no exams only assignments. The other 2 I took this year have exams, sometime in Jan/Feb I think.

 

[Naickej4]

2 of my modules are continuous assessment, so there are no exams only assignments. The other 2 I took this year have exams, sometime in Jan/Feb I think.

Okay, cool. I hope you well for all your modules and that you complete your honours successfully.

 

[LegionnaireJ]

Hello, thank you for your honest and valuable feedback as I am contemplating UNISA or UJ, I am busy doing more research and feedback from others before I make a clear cut decision. I heard UJ is very good but I just abit fearful on their 25% lecture rule which has to be made otherwise you have to repeat the module.

Did you write any exams as yet?

For what it's worth - did my hons through Unisa (undergrad as well):

They do force you to take the research modules (HPCOS81 and HRCOS82) over two years - tried to get them to let me do it in one year, but no luck.

Can confirm that the "support" you get is basically non-existent, but was used to it after undergrad. Also the comment earlier in the thread about receiving your assignment marks late rings very true. Once got a mark back for my final assignment after I had taken the exam....

That said- it wasn't that brutal to complete. I'm no genius, so had my struggles, and working full time doesn't help. But expect most people will be in the same boat who are considering this.

HRCOS82 can be a lot of work, not all of it fun (mostly the admin around constructing the research paper). I picked a project that had me writing an ML android app with OpenCV, and I had never touched Java and android dev before. Bit mad. But it was also this project that landed me my first dev job straight after this.

Depending on your background, wouldn't recommend taking the Formal logic stuff if you didn't do quite a bit of it in undergrad, as it builds. Not really that difficult, but you will have a lot of gaps that you will need to fill.

Software engineering is more theoretical in nature, bit of a drag to be honest. Lots of methodologies etc. you have to parrot-learn.

Loved Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, as well as Formal Program Verification (interesting math).

I shaped up fairly well in the workplace, although both my undergrad and hons I structured more towards the AI/ML/Formal logic side - which I haven't used that much. Never felt like I was behind the curve by going the UNISA route.

That said - have a new Software Engineering grad from UKZN under me, and his technical skills are really good. Would say his training was definitely better than UNISA.

Good luck with your decision, makes me want to start studying again.

 

[Naickej4]

For what it's worth - did my hons through Unisa (undergrad as well):
View attachment 1132230
They do force you to take the research modules (HPCOS81 and HRCOS82) over two years - tried to get them to let me do it in one year, but no luck.

Can confirm that the "support" you get is basically non-existent, but was used to it after undergrad. Also the comment earlier in the thread about receiving your assignment marks late rings very true. Once got a mark back for my final assignment after I had taken the exam....

That said- it wasn't that brutal to complete. I'm no genius, so had my struggles, and working full time doesn't help. But expect most people will be in the same boat who are considering this.

HRCOS82 can be a lot of work, not all of it fun (mostly the admin around constructing the research paper). I picked a project that had me writing an ML android app with OpenCV, and I had never touched Java and android dev before. Bit mad. But it was also this project that landed me my first dev job straight after this.

Depending on your background, wouldn't recommend taking the Formal logic stuff if you didn't do quite a bit of it in undergrad, as it builds. Not really that difficult, but you will have a lot of gaps that you will need to fill.

Software engineering is more theoretical in nature, bit of a drag to be honest. Lots of methodologies etc. you have to parrot-learn.

Loved Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, as well as Formal Program Verification (interesting math).

I shaped up fairly well in the workplace, although both my undergrad and hons I structured more towards the AI/ML/Formal logic side - which I haven't used that much. Never felt like I was behind the curve by going the UNISA route.

That said - have a new Software Engineering grad from UKZN under me, and his technical skills are really good. Would say his training was definitely better than UNISA.

Good luck with your decision, makes me want to start studying again.

Hello LegionnaireJ. Thank you for taking your time to reply with a detail response. I really appreciate and might want to get into contact with you if I choose the UNISA option.
I have previously did my btech in computer engineering. So I think I will be needing to catch up on the maths that is used for ML.

What maths will I have to learn?

 

[LegionnaireJ]

For what it's worth - did my hons through Unisa (undergrad as well):
View attachment 1132230
They do force you to take the research modules (HPCOS81 and HRCOS82) over two years - tried to get them to let me do it in one year, but no luck.

Can confirm that the "support" you get is basically non-existent, but was used to it after undergrad. Also the comment earlier in the thread about receiving your assignment marks late rings very true. Once got a mark back for my final assignment after I had taken the exam....

That said- it wasn't that brutal to complete. I'm no genius, so had my struggles, and working full time doesn't help. But expect most people will be in the same boat who are considering this.

HRCOS82 can be a lot of work, not all of it fun (mostly the admin around constructing the research paper). I picked a project that had me writing an ML android app with OpenCV, and I had never touched Java and android dev before. Bit mad. But it was also this project that landed me my first dev job straight after this.

Depending on your background, wouldn't recommend taking the Formal logic stuff if you didn't do quite a bit of it in undergrad, as it builds. Not really that difficult, but you will have a lot of gaps that you will need to fill.

Software engineering is more theoretical in nature, bit of a drag to be honest. Lots of methodologies etc. you have to parrot-learn.

Loved Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, as well as Formal Program Verification (interesting math).

I shaped up fairly well in the workplace, although both my undergrad and hons I structured more towards the AI/ML/Formal logic side - which I haven't used that much. Never felt like I was behind the curve by going the UNISA route.

That said - have a new Software Engineering grad from UKZN under me, and his technical skills are really good. Would say his training was definitely better than UNISA.

Good luck with your decision, makes me want to start studying again.

Hello LegionnaireJ. Thank you for taking your time to reply with a detail response. I really appreciate and might want to get into contact with you if I choose the UNISA option.
I have previously did my btech in computer engineering. So I think I will be needing to catch up on the maths that is used for ML.

What maths will I have to learn?

Anytime - give me until after work and I will go through the handbooks and summarize. Will send you a PM with my contact details as well, you are more than welcome to ask away.

In the meantime - this is what I studied in undergrad - might help to give you an idea:

 

[Naickej4]

Anytime - give me until after work and I will go through the handbooks and summarize. Will send you a PM with my contact details as well, you are more than welcome to ask away.

In the meantime - this is what I studied in undergrad - might help to give you an idea:
View attachment 1132270

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your help it means alot.
I have done just a few on these in CS engineering like the database and programming.

 

[Moonlit8377]

One other thing that may help you if you're a slacker like me is that you may need to provision more time for the assignments in these subjects. When I did my BTech through UNISA I could bang out an assignment from beginning to end in about 3-5 hours easily without ever reading the content prior. I think the combination of some of the material being new to me as well as the sheer volume of work expected to be produced mean't this was bumped up to a min of a day, generally with the work taking most of the weekend to put out. Keep in mind this was also from never reading or knowing about the subject matter to completing the assignment. If you're the kind of person that actively reads the textbook and does research/learning periodically prior to upcoming assignments then this should be a bit easier/less time consuming for you.

One thing I found that did throw a spanner in the works was that there was very little clarity in what was expected in some modules. Machine learning had a massive jump from everything making sense to not making sense at all and was heavily stats based; I never did any proper math focused studies after matric which didn't help. It's also a very theoretical subject and when I approached a colleague at the time who was applying to do his masters in ML in Canada at the time he couldn't answer many of the questions in the first assignment. Another one of interest was Enterprise Architecture. It's a very subjective module with no real sense of direction (the same sense being shared by EVERY student in the course). I was convinced I was doing it completely wrong and would fail but it turned out that I aced it - makes no sense to me.

Either way the course was interesting and glad I did it. Wish I could find a coursework based masters to continue with as I absolutely loathe dissertations, although the way my life is going I might be better off doing an MBA or similar.

Wits is offering a coursebased masters in CS here: https://www.wits.ac.za/course-finder/postgraduate/science/msc-computer-science/

But there is a research component(mini-dissertation or research report).

 

[Dylan_G]

Wits is offering a coursebased masters in CS here: https://www.wits.ac.za/course-finder/postgraduate/science/msc-computer-science/

But there is a research component(mini-dissertation or research report).

Full-time though.

 

[Dylan_G]

Hello LegionnaireJ. Thank you for taking your time to reply with a detail response. I really appreciate and might want to get into contact with you if I choose the UNISA option.
I have previously did my btech in computer engineering. So I think I will be needing to catch up on the maths that is used for ML.

What maths will I have to learn?

Did you ever do the Honours?

I also did a BTech in Comp Eng... Started the BSc Honours with UNISA last year. This year will be my second. Still have two final portfolios to complete by end of Jan (yes, "last years" final portfolios are due end of Jan).

 

[semaphore]

Wife is now starting her bsc in applied maths and comp sci through unisa, but she already has a PhD. She is structuring her modules very heavy on the maths side first.