Flashes of Panic

Last night was the first (and only) physical meeting of the Computer Security course I’m taking over the first part of the summer. It’s an online course, something I’ve never done before. Yes, never. Geek that I am, I think I know myself, and I suspect I’d have trouble focusing on a course without regular class sections to hold my attention. We’ll see.

I’ve had three classes with this professor before (based on my transcript from WSC, you’d think they only had two professors in the CS department,) and this was a typical first meeting for him. The essential information was who he was, when his office hours were, and all the various ways to contact him; I was nearly ten minutes late, but he was still going on that when I arrived. In person, sometimes I feel like he teaches by repetition, presenting the same information three or four different ways just to make sure it sinks in, where I’d prefer to build on the information as soon as I’ve absorbed it.

We also did a rough run-through of the structure of the course. I recognize a lot of the topics on the syllabus, but only as topics; I’ve seen “Kerberos” before, for example, but other than knowing it has something to do with authentication, I couldn’t explain it. That’s good, there’s something for me to learn here.

And, finally, we walked through the software we’d be using to work through the syllabus. The course will be essentially self-paced, using WSC’s WebCT server. I’ve used WebCT in a limited manner for previous courses; this one relies on it. This is interesting to me on a professional level; WebCT is widely used and we’re sometimes asked at work to format ancillary material from our books for use with it. (I’m intrigued to notice that none of the “happy students” photos on WebCT’s home page actually show them gazing into a lit computer screen; in fact, I’m seeing some green chalkboards and pen-and-paper note-taking in there.)

Logging in to WebCT was a minor challenge; your login name is tied to your college ID number, and I was unclear on whether I even had such a number. It turns out that I do, but I use it so infrequently I was unable to even guess the slice of it incorporated in my WebCT login.

Once logged in, we’ve got a series of “lessons” already in WebCT. We attack them at our own pace, but there’s an exam on June 15 and it is strongly suggested that we have reached a certain point by then. The exams are self-scheduled (within a time frame) and taken online; other WebCT resources are a course message board and some Java-based chat “rooms.”

The lessons link to a fair amount of online reading; we’re also required to monitor a “security focused mailing list.” I already subscribe to two SANS lists, but I don’t think that’s quite what he had in mind, so for the time being I’m going to monitor Bugtraq as well.

I’ll be interested to see how this all works out. I’ve learned plenty in my previous WSC courses, but I’ve also felt like they’re pitched for a different kind of student. I’m trying to sponge up all the general principles and foundation I can, in hopes of building an advanced degree on that. Most of my classmates are just looking for a B.S., and either a job, or a raise at the job they’ve got. In many cases, this will be their first degree past high school. They almost make me feel guilty for being so… overqualified?

Perhaps now that class has started, I need an “education” category. (One day, I’ll remember to add categories to the template so you can see the classification I’m doing.)

Now playing: You Wreck Me from Wildflowers by Tom Petty