FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Click on the question for an answer
There could me a number of reasons why an exercise will not load onto your computer. Firstly, there is nothing wrong with the website or the computer code. Your WEB BROWSER (i.e Internet Explorer) on your computer needs to have the following functions enabled - COOKIES and JAVA SCRIPT. These two functions are normally ENABLED in Internet Explorer when installed from new. Only you or a previous owner will have disabled them. To check if they are enabled do the following. Open Internet Explorer and click on the VIEW drop-down menu. Select Internet Options and then ADVANCED. Ensure 'always accept cookies' is ticked. Ensure Java Script is ticked. That is all that is usually required. This problem occured on two students' computers last term and this check sorted them out. Another reason for not accessing exercise pages is if you are accessing the website through a special firewall or via a remote server. These are issues beyond my control and can be particular to individual computer network systems. This site works best when accessed through a regular 'dial up Internet connection' or Cable Moden Internet service.
Any computer can access these exercises as long as it can support the minimun Internet browser requirements stated above. Most of this website was written on a PENTIUM P120 laptop, 16Mb RAM, running Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 4.0 - I cannot guarantee any computer spec lower than this will not cause problems. The same laptop, although a little slow, can access all areas of this website.
The code used on the exercise pages requires SOMETHING to be written into the prompt boxes. If the code does not see a single character in the box then it will not (usually) load the exercise. It is important to fill these boxes in to allow the Lecturer to assess your learning. Many exercises are completed each week and clear information helps keep things in order.
Hmm, this one gets asked a lot. Here is the reason. Certain exercises can actually be accessed from different topic pages. This makes it difficult to track which page you actually arrived from so rather than take you back to the wrong one - you get to select it yourself. Also, it is not envisaged that people will be completing all exercises in order, so this way you are in full control. Another reason is that I would have to completely re-engineer the code in each exercise and this would take ages. the time is better spent writing more exercises. You can help yourselves out here anyway. Either - use the Internet explorer 'web address window', if you click on the little dropdown arrow on the right of it you will see the address of the TOPIC page you arrived from. Click it and you are taken to that TOPIC page. Saves quite a bit of time. Also you could open a new window (File, New, Window) while you are on the TOPIC page. From the new window select the exercise you want. When you have completed it just close the whole window leaving the 'original' TOPIC page. Easy eh.........
(NOTE! - THIS FUNCTION IS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE *When you see the FEEDBACK PAGE a few seconds after you complete the exercise, a duplicate is sent, via e-mail, to your lecturer. In this case that is Kevin Brown, Paul Cornford and a remote e-mail address on Kevin's Server at his home. All completed exercise results are kept and processed by Kevin on his computer at college. They are copied from the E-mail client into a Web Form Processing program (TwinGrid 6.0 developed by DataDynamica) from where they can be put into a Spreadsheet Program (Microsoft excel 2000). Individual records can then be tracked. All Results are then redirected to the respective lecturer you named during the exercise. Paul has a copy incase kevs computer fails and loses the records. The copy sent to Kevin's server is a backup in case the college system goes down and all records are lost. this triple-redundancy system ensures that records cannot be lost. In all cases, the records are used only by the staff that teach you and are NOT made available to any third-party. NOTE: Exercises with NO NAME or LECTURER NAME ARE DELETED BY THE E-MAIL SERVER.
You can track your own progress by checking the SCORE at the top of a completed exercise. NOTE: A COMPLETED EXERCISE IS ONE WHERE EVERY ANSWER HAS BEEN ANSWERED CORRECTLY - NO MATTER HOW MANY ATTEMPTS ARE TAKEN. Alternatively, when the feedback function is working,save the feedback sheets on your computer (right click on the feedback page, save as, select where and give it a name, click ok - job done). You can then look back at them to check your learning. Alternatively, you could print them out and keep then to refer back to.
Theoretically, you can't ever finish all the exercises because each exercise is rearranged every time it reloads. The questions and answers will never be in the same order in in some cases, questions are limited each time but actually selected from a database of questions. The odds of seeing all questions in the same order more than once are infinite. Other than that, new exercises are always being added making this Website 'perpetual' - i.e never ending.
If you want to, and have the necessary know how then yes. But what is the point. If you cheat then you aren't learning anything and I won't be able to assess what you actually need extra revision on. I have put some safeguards in to stop cheating but it is not ultra-secure.
Your lecturer will usually tell you which exercise to complete. Other than that, do any you feel like doing. Obviouly some of the topics you will not have covered yet so you may have difficulty with those ones. however, this is a good way of planning your own learning based on the difficulties you come across. You could research these topics for yourself thereby improving your own learning.
Only your Lecturer and the other Lecturers in the department. Occasionally an examiner or Inspector may need to see the results although this is usually to confirm record keeping rather than checking on any one individual. If an employer (who is sponsoring you) wishes to see your results then they can. This would be no different from a paper based record system.
The exercises on this website will prepare you for the City and Guilds 2330 Certificate in Electrotechnical Technology. It will also serve as a useful revision and learning tool, accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from any Internet connected PC anywhere in the world. Exercises are marked automatically within 2 - 3 seconds. The website also has extra revision notes on it for you to download.
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