Diary of a CIW Student

a Scheidegger Experience

CIW Website Design Manager.

16th Aug 2004: I have now completed Section 1 Part A without any difficulty but I have come across some slightly disconcerting threads in a couple of forums. Basically, these are slating Scheidegger as a no good company. There were no specific details and I shall endeavour to find out more.

19th Aug 2004: I have tried to find out more about Scheidegger with little success, found a few more forum threads complaining about them, but they didn't give any detail. I did find an entry at jobseekersadvice.com forum from someone claiming to have received a full refund from Scheidegger, but I couldn't get into the forum for details. So far I have had no cause for complaint, assignments are marked and returned reasonably quickly, when I ask questions of the tutors, either by phone or email, they are answered. I think the study material is of fairly good quality

Mon 30th Aug 2004

This morning I received the course material for Section 1 Part B. This comprises 5 tutor marked assignments as did Part A. It's very exciting, we now move on to designing basic web pages. Time to get the sleeves rolled up and get our hands dirty with HTML. Of course, I do know a little about this already otherwise I may have a problem explaining the presence of this web page.

Sun 5th Sep 2004

During an idle moment I decided to look into practice tests or dummy tests as they are sometimes called. I came across a reference to CIW Maniac in a forum, I forget which one, so I visited their site and tried an online dummy test for the CIW Foundation exam. Suffice to say I need to do some serious work. It reminded me of the Citrix CCA exam which I failed, albeit marginally, on my first attempt. I knew the subject very well and was confident of my ability, but the phrasing of the questions was very unusual and threw me completely. I passed on the second attempt after persuading my employer to shell out for the Boson Software dummy tests which made all the difference. I think this CIW stuff is going to be similar. As yet I don't know how much help Scheidegger are likely to give about the exams.

Sat 18th Sep 2004

This week I completed assignment 8 however, I have queried a result from assignment 7 which has cast some doubt either on Scheidegger's competence or on mine. There was a question on this assignment as follows:

The number of bytes in an image file is not directly related to it's physical dimensions.

True or False

I answered: True which was deemed incorrect. I am still adamant that it is correct and have emailed the tutor team to this effect. It will be interesting to see what their response will be. Email me with your thoughts!

Mon 20th Sep 2004

Found more links to dissatisfied students today. Both with the course content and the sales tactics employed to sign you up. I did had a link here, for some time, showing what I meant, but the target page has vanished so I have had to remove the link.

Thu 23rd Sep 2004

Well, surprisingly perhaps, I have not had a reply to my email query to Scheidegger. I was forced therefore, I'm an impatient so and so, to telephone them. I must give them their due, they had misconstrued my email thinking I was making an observation rather than asking a question. I spoke with a tutor for the first time whilst doing the course and found it constructive. He was helpful and sounded knowledgeable and seemed happy to talk at length to answer the many questions I put to him. He did agree with my interpretation of the question and my answer, but simply stated the answers they are required to go by deemed me wrong. Mr Jobsworth methinks!

Sun 17th Oct 2004

Finally, I have completed Section 1 Part B. Not that it was particularly difficult I just got a bit distracted with other things. Having said that, the Revision Section at the end did get a little more challenging. I needed to go back and refresh my mind on a few things. I thought the part covering XML was more than a bit patchy, but I'm sure I can get a book on it, if we don't cover it in more depth later.

Tue 21st Dec 2004

Got around to updating this page, eventually. Things have been a bit hectic at work and all is not well with the world in that department, but that's another story. I have now all but completed Section 1 Part C and, have to say, it is not that straight-forward. I completed the assignments without much difficulty, but now have the final assignment in front of me and find I need to go back and revise the whole section. I was aware that the networking was going to be a problem from stories I have read on various forums, and they were right. The networking section needs some detailed reading and study to understand it fully.

By way of revision, I have decided to put all my notes on a new web site, which may be of benefit to other students. Check back soon to see if it has been published yet.

Fri 7th Jan 2005

OK. Section 1 of the course is now complete, although I am still awaiting the results back for TMA-15A which was not at all straightforward. I needed to go back and revise the whole section just to be sure. So, what I did was put all my revision down in web pages, just in case it may be of use to anyone else.

Thu 26th May 2005

Well it's been a long time since I updated this page and I was spurred on to do so after I checked this sites logs and noticed a number of people searching for Scheidegger Tutor Marked Assignment 7. Coincidentally I have just completed TMA-7 from Section 2 of the course, and it was hard work. Most assignments up to now have taken me a few hours to complete, this one took the best part of two weeks! It was worth the effort though, as I have just had the results back and achieved 100% for both parts of the assignment.

Sat 4th June 2005

I needed to contact Scheidegger yesterday, as the latest instalment of my course had not turned up despite receiving the results of my last tutor marked assignment over a week ago. It seems that the tutor team had not informed the administration department of the assignment completion so nothing had been sent. However, the admin department are obviously efficient, the course material arrived this morning.

Thu 14th July 2005

It's been a little while since my last update here, mainly because the course is getting harder and needs more time spent on it. I am currently mid-way through the section on Perl programming and the two sections on regular expressions and references are real brain-melting stuff. I got through them having figured out enough to complete tutor marked assignments 5 & 6 but can honestly say I don't really understand them. JavaScript, the previous section, seemed very easy until I was sent the end of section Revision Assignment! It was a corker and took me weeks to complete, but I've already mentioned this in an earlier entry. I have since been contacted by another Scheidegger CIW student completely stuck on this part. I have endeavoured to assist as apparently Scheidegger have not been too forthcoming.

Fri 30 Sep 2005

OK the holiday has been and gone, Mallorca was great, and it's time to get the nose back against the grind-stone. I have just sent off the end of section assignments for the Perl section. Had a problem with one of the questions, which asked you to write a program to display a series of question requesting that you input a random number of characters where the characters would be $, £ or &.

Straight forward you say, but I had a problem with the £ character not displaying correctly. It appeared that after I assigned the character to a scalar variable it converted it from ASCII 163 to ASCII 250. I duly emailed my query to the tutor, and gave up waiting for the reply and just substituted the £ with a # to complete the assignment. The tutor did reply, but rather than explaining what the problem was, or might be, they simply sent me the code they believed to be the correct answer. Not really a lot of help.

Fri 27 Jan 2006

Well I'm still here, and still doing the course. Occasionally it feels like it's never-ending, but I am now at the end of section 3. Still have the end-of-section assignment to go, but I hope that won't be too demanding. This has taken me over 3 months to do this section and I'm not very sure why. I have been taking extensive notes as i went, and I have tried to make it as hands-on as possible. I have installed MDaemon, WebTrends, EasyProxy and AnalogX Proxy server. I have installed Perl on IIS and tried to reproduce all the exercises on one machine or another. Time-consuming but very enlightening!

Thank you to the many people who emailed me to ask if I had given up updating this page - the answer is no, I just have too many other irons in the fire.

4th Feb 2006

Ouch! Just got a letter from Skills Train today - seems my allotted time to complete the course has expired. It's going to cost me £100 to extend for 6 months, or £150 to extend for 12 months. Damned annoying, as I figure to complete in two months. So, take heed. Don't let your study schedule drift. At least now we know that Skills Train and Scheidegger are one and the same.

9th Mar 2006

Well I did finally receive the end-of-section assignment after my course extension went through. I have had it for just over a week but haven't completed it yet. Just haven't had the time! The assignment is in three parts. The first two are reasonably straight-forward and these are done. The third part is on a whole new topic, the notes for which are included. The legal issues around Web sites and the content therein. Heavy stuff . . .

This is the end of section 3, so I won't start section 4 until I manage to complete and submit this assignment.

7th Apr 2006

A pleasant surprise, the other day. I received a telephone call from Skills Train following a letter I had sent them. I had asked about exam fees and their reimbursement. A very nice lady confirmed that Scheidegger / Skills Train will refund exam fees if I send in the receipts subsequent to taking the exams. She also confirmed that exams are normally taken at the end of the course, but may be taken at any time to suit the course and the student.

I have now completed assignment 1 from section 4 and am awaiting it's return. It's all hands to the pump now, to get this finished long before my new August deadline.

11th Apr 2006

Assignment 2 has now been completed and sent off. But, that wasn't the main reason for the update. I have just received a phone call from Skills Train, a very pleasant young man informed me, that as I had completed version 4 of section 1 they will now send me out the version 5 manual once I have completed section 4. This will contain more up-to-date information prior to taking the exams. Jolly decent, I thought.

2nd May 2006

Doh! Who's a prize plonker? Phoned Scheidegger today to chase my last assignment which hasn't been marked and returned. Turns out I made a submission via their web site but managed to forget to attach the file. That's wasted a few weeks, which I could well do without.

22nd May 2006

I'm still waiting for the course material for the final section, which I'm promised will be here this week. I'm not holding my breath. I have finally managed to update my other web site, link at the top of this page, which is still not complete but it's much closer than it was.

23rd May 2006

I wonder if Scheidegger read this Blog? It might account for the course material turning up this morning, complete with my own copy of Macromedia Studio MX. I have installed Studio MX and had a quick look at Dreamweaver and Flash. I think I need to read the course notes carefully, as I haven't the first idea where to begin with these packages.

29th May 2006

Just completed and uploaded TMA4, which is the first assignment from Section 4 Part B. I feel compelled to applaud Scheidegger on these new Version 5 manuals. They are a great improvement on the earlier material and the accompanying movies are interesting and informative. I found the earlier ones patronising and dull. I think the material is now developed by a new company - Prosoft, and they are making a good job of it. Oh, and Dreamweaver is VERY impressive, but I'm not sure that I will actually use it.

4 Aug 2006

Where does the time go? That's 2 months since my last update, and I don't know what I was doing! I admit I lost interest in the course for a bit, too many other things on the go. But now I'm seriously running out of time to complete. I have just sent off TMA05 the penultimate assignment from the course. I am very impressed with Flash and I can see me using this quite a lot. Dreamweaver is good, but I just had a look at the code generated by the last sample I was working on. There were seven (yes 7) screens of code before I got to the <BODY> tag. That is not good. Must go as I need to knuckle down and get ready for the last assignment.

14 Aug 2006

I have just received back the marked assignment that I submitted last Tuesday. This was quite quick, less than a week to get the assignment returned. This was the LAST assignment, unless they are going to send out a revision task. I suppose I should start thinking about booking some exams. Will keep you posted.

21 Aug 2006

Well, yes they are going to send out more assignments! They are calling them pre-examination assignments which must be completed before being invited to apply for the exams. I queried this and asked what was stopping me from applying directly to Prometric? Apparently Prometric check with Scheidegger that you have successfully completed the course and until such time as we have completed the pre-examination assignments the course is not complete. I have requested that they send me the version 5 material for section 1. It also appears that we have a choice of exams. Either the CIW exams or we can elect to take City & Guilds 7262-208 Web Site Design

28 Nov 2006

I must be honest here. I think I have lost interest in the course, the motivation has dwindled. I have started the pre-examination assignment and completed the required Web site. I have yet to write the Perl program and partly because I am busy with other work and partly because I can't be bothered it just hasn't happened. I have completed the course as far as it goes, and I never started the course with a view to attaining the accreditation, so things are slipping more than a little. I also expect that now I have procrastinated for so long I will have run out of course time yet again.

7 Dec 2006

This is not an update about the course, rather I have just spent some time trying to resolve an issue with Internet Explorer 7. As it turns out, the workaround for the blue screen error with the Run Once page is fairly straightforward. I have published the resolution on my CIW site as this seemed to be a more suitable place for it.

12 Dec 2006

A bit of a follow-on from the last entry. Some time ago I bought a set of previous CIW exam answers from a chap on eBay. I found these interesting and useful so I have made them available on my CIW site. Here is the link for the past Exam Answers.

11 Apr 2007

This will be my last entry in this blog. I have completed all sections of the course and finished all tutor marked assignments, except the pre-examination assignment which I don't intend to do. I will not sit the exams as I have achieved what I set out to do, which was learn a new skill. I won't get a job, while I would like one; my health keeps me at home where I can do some work.

If you have been following this blog regularly, and I know many of you have, thank you for your interest and for your many emails. If you are doing the course then I wish you every success.

Please remember to check out my CIW Course in a Nutshell site. Don't just take a quick squint at the index page, dig deeper and look at some of the section paragraphs.

If you are doing the course please email me and let me know how you are progressing. If you have any questions, specifically about the course I will try to help.