Reflective commentary
From the outset, this module was always going to be something different for two reasons. Firstly, the most obvious difference between "The Northern Dimension" and other modules available is that in no other module has the Arctic been so much as mentioned in other modules, the ability to study something which I have not been able to study before was a draw to the module. The second difference was the assessments, a presentation and an essay are nothing new for a politics module but the inclusion of building my own website was something I have not done since my GCSE's.
Along with making a website, all of the assessments led on from each other. Allowing me to study my chosen topic in more and more depth as the module went on. From having a vague grasp of my chosen subject when I gave my presentation, to understanding my topic well when I wrote the essay and finally having a secure grasp of the topic.
In making this website I found that I was not able to achieve, in a short space of time, the attractive website I wanted to create with NetObjectsFusion and as a result I sourced an alternative, arriving at Weebly. Weebly was easy to use and allowed me to create a very high quality website which fulfilled my personal wishes at least on appearance grounds.
Weebly was a dream to use, providing a wide selection of different example templates from which to create your website, it's user interface is pleasant to use to customise the whole website. It has a tab in the website creator from which you can control the number of pages, which pages appear on the navigation bar and allows you to control which pages can be accessed from the navigation bar. Embedding a text box, an image or a video was generally achieved in around 3 clicks, simple and slick is a phrase which describes Weebly.
To a student who is taking this module in the future I would say that this is a fantastic module to take, other than my dissertation no other module has allowed me to delve so much into a single topic. As there are three forms of assessment in this module, you gain an insight into what you could add to the next assessment to make it better than the previous, this is key to creating a good essay and an effective website in my opinion. On top of this the meeting with the David helped me the most with this module as it sparked my interest further into the topic with his enthusiasm for all things Arctic.
I would recommend this module highly to a student considering whether or not to take it, as someone who does not like examinations I chose this module firstly out of a wish to avoid an exam, but I found myself enjoying this module more and more as time went on and I hope that future students find such enjoyment in deeply studying a subject as well.