Finnish Universities (XAMK etc.) (incl. CS/IT courses!)

[sarahmac]

Hey Sarah, I saw your post on the Sports Nutrition course and replied to you, but I don't know if their discussion board alerts you to replies, so I'm putting it here as well:

From the bottom of the page on the third section of the course:
"How do I know that the course has been completed?
1. You must pass all three exams successfully. This is the criterion for completing the course. If the course progress shows as 93% / 100 %, you don't have to worry about it.
2. The teacher marks the course credits twice a month: 1) Friday of the second week of the month, and 2) Friday of the last week of the month. Please note, studies completed in the summer are registered in the study register in August 2021.
3. When the teacher has marked your course credits on the Peppi, you will receive a feedback link to your Xamk student email. I'm asking you to leave your course feedback."

I suggest checking your email to see if you received the course feedback request. Also, I believe that after the instructor grades the course, it might take 5-10 for things to get updated on Peppi. I could be wrong though, since is the first class I took through learn.xamk.

That said, I finished the course this evening. I went through every single page and ensured that all of the boxes were checked, but the overall progress still only shows as 73%, so I'm not sure what is missing to get it up to 100%.

Hi John,

Yes the discussion board sends an email to your XAMK email address if you have "subscribe to thread" turned on. I replied to you there. The feedback is something you do after your grade is entered in Peppi. When instructors close out the course for you and enter your grade, it is an option they can hit to send out a feedback request.

My post was more to remind the professor that I am waiting in an innocuous way... Since she grades twice per month, and I completed the course before the end of the previous grading period. So now that is two periods that have been missed. This is really atypical for XAMK, normally the professors are pretty 'on it'. When the last grading period was missed I assumed she was on holiday or something but now this is the second one.

Actually I remember someone else on the forum had a similar problem with this class/professor a little while ago though, I believe there was discussion in the XAMK thread that k-k-k-katy started where people were trying to work out if somehow there was another assignment or hidden exam that people were missing.

Peppi updates instantly for future reference!

Sarah

So far, I've taken the sports nutrition course and 4-5 modules in the video game creation course. Everything has been incredibly easy so far, is that typical for XAMK courses or have I just got lucky and haven't arrived to the hard classes yet?

Difficulty varies!

Most of the Open U courses tend to be more lower level credits, but there are also a couple (particularly the Master's electives) that are writing heavy.

XAMK has a degree catalogue https://opinto-opas.xamk.fi/index.php/en/28/en where you can see how some of the courses fit into their degree plans. Most are either electives, or are first year/second year classes. The idea (for Finland in general) is that people can do OU courses and then apply to an actual university with their credits and go into the second year of study.

However, there are exceptions. Some of the classes through OU are core classes for their respective programs (it will tell you when you select the course info if this is the case). Finnish universities (Helsinki and LUT have been the same) are very much like the UK, where there are not necessarily mid-terms or assignments, just one final exam. "Cognitive Functions in Neurological Diseases", for example, is a semester's worth of reading, videos and powerpoints with one exam at the end. Exactly how in-person university was for me, since I never actually went to class and just read the lecture powerpoints after the professor posted them online aha.

The difficulty thus varies since the amount you are expected to know for that final exam varies. "Cognitive Functions in Neurological Diseases" is.. a lot. Children's Nursing? Not so much. The course and final are based on one textbook in particular and if you read through the relevant parts of the textbook you'll be fine. That said, I am glad that class was pass/fail.

The classes that do have assignments can sometimes be the most work though. I had to do a community health assessment for Global Health, which took several days of interviews, compiling statistics, walking round my village in the rain, online research etc. even before I could start the report write-up.