How to start and pass a course

Before starting the course, please read these instructions. Especially, completing the course section is important as the procedure for receiving credits is different than in other mooc courses.

Starting the courses

The course material is freely available, and you can read it without any account. In order to complete the course, you will need to answer the questionnaires, essays and complete programming exercises. For that you will need a mooc.fi account that you can create at the right hand corner of this course material. This is the only required registration.

Once you have created the account, please consider answering a background questionnaire. Answering the questionnaire should take less than 10 minutes and will be very valuable for the research conducted on this course.

Exercises in the courses

There are 3 types of exercises in a course:

Questionnaires

Questionnaires are typically multiple choice options, and they are worth of 1 point. Typically, you get two chances of answering the question correctly.

Essays

See instructions on writing and peer-reviewing essays here.

Programming exercises

The programming exercises use TMC system. Each programming exercise is worth of 5 points, and can be resubmitted an unlimited number of times. The exercises are tested automatically, and they can be tested locally on your personal computer before submitting your solution.

Setting up the TMC environment and instructions for submitting the exercises is detailed at individual courses.

Not every course has programming exercises.

Completing the courses

Cyber security base consists of 6 individual courses. You will get credits for each course individually. For example, if you are only interested in the introduction course, then you do not need to complete the remaining 5 courses.

You can complete the courses out-of-order but it is recommended that you do them in order due to the prerequisites.

To complete an individual course you will have to gather enough points. The point threshold is indicated on each individual course. Note that the essays are not immediately accepted once you have written them as they need to be peer-reviewed or possibly checked by the staff.

Each course has a deadline, and you have gather enough points before the deadline. If you do not have enough points once the deadline has passed, the points are lost. Essays that have been submitted on-time such that the author has given enough feedback to other essays will be checked, regardless whether they have received enough peer reviews.

Once you have gathered enough points, mooc.fi will acknowledge that you have passed the course. There may be some delay between having enough points and being acknowledged for passing the course, especially if you have completed the course early.

Once the course has been passed, you will receive a notification email and the course should be shown at the completed courses page.

Your next actions depend on your status:

Instructions for students at Helsinki University

Once the system has acknowledged that you have passed the course, you must register the course through the Open University enrollment form to receive credits. The form is available either through the completed courses page or by following the link in the notification email.

On the enrollment form, be sure that you enter the email address you used to complete the course in the mooc.fi system in the Your email address on the MOOC course (in Finnish: Käyttämäsi sähköpostiosoite MOOC-kurssilla) field.

The registration has a deadline so do not postpone it. If the deadline has passed, please contact the course staff via email.

After you have completed the Open University course enrollment, you will receive course credits in the University of Helsinki study register typically within a week (in certain cases this may take longer, up to 6 weeks, due to the holiday service breaks). You can view the credits in SISU or in the national My Studyinfo service.

Note that you have to do this for each individual course, 6 times at most.

The 6 individual courses correspond to the two larger UH courses:

First course TKT20009 (5 cr):

Introduction to Cyber Security (1 cr)
Securing Software (3 cr)
Course Project I (1 cr)

Second course CSM13204 (5 cr):

Advanced Topics (3 cr)
Course Project II (1 cr)
Capture The Flag (1 cr)

In the past, the students were required to merge the smaller courses into larger courses. This is no longer required due to SISU.

Instructions for Finnish residents

The registration has a deadline so do not postpone it. If the deadline has passed, please contact the course staff via email.

Note that you have to do this for each individual course, 6 times at most.

If you are a student at the university (but not at Helsinki University), you may be able to transfer these credits. Discuss this possibility with your study counselor before starting the course.

Instructions for non-Finnish residents

Once the system has acknowledged that you have passed the course, you will receive a certificate, which can be downloaded at the completed courses page.

If you are a student at the university, you may be able to transfer these credits using the certificate. Discuss this possibility with your study counselor before starting the course.

Alternatively, you can enroll on the course in person in Helsinki (further information can be found here.)