After completing my HND at Edinburgh College I gained direct entry into year 3 of a bachelors degree course at Edinburgh Napier.
This was more intense than the previous courses at college, but were again affected by the ongoing pandemic.
Classes were a mix of online and in person with the guidance changing frequently in line with government guidleines.
The final module was a group project, involving students from different disciplines within the School of Computing coming together to bid for and then complete a project for an outside client.
I was the team leader for a group which created a website for the RSPB, however as the site itself does not launch until November I am not able to put more detail here until then.
This year long course extended the knowledge gained in the HNC with modules on Apache web servers, Windows Server administration, computer forensics, Cloud Infrastructure and Routing and Switching technologies. Over the course of the two years at Edinburgh College I completed the three sections of the CCNA v7, consisting of: Routing and Switching (R & S) Enterprise Networking, Security and Automation (ENSA) Switching, Routing and Wireless Essentials (SRWE) One of the final Modules was a graded unit, designed to bring all the knowledge gained so far into one unit. The task we were given was to design and impliment a network for a small business, including costing all equipment, design of the network, and impliment the network using virtualisation tools. This included virtual machines for servers and host devices and Cisco Packet Tracer for the network itself.
This is a full-time one-year course designed to give a range of essential skills in the computing industry, where the choice at the midpoint of the year was to specialise in either software development or networking. Modules of this course included technical subjects, such as Object Orientated Programming, Software Development and Networking Technology. There were also modules focused on Professionalism and Ethics, Teamworking and Ethical Hacking. The pandemic struck at the during easter of this course and led to much all of the learning moving to a virtual environment. Passing the HNC enabled automatic entry into the HND.