Email the programme office and start a conversation with them -- they're pretty responsive. My interview was just sitting down and chatting with one of their professors for an hour or so and we geeked out and it was fine.
> an ideal way to test out the structure and style of a classroom
My understanding is that all the courses are explicitly available to anyone who wants to take them and can be booked by members of the public, although expect there to be priority to matriculated students for very popular courses (of which SEM is _not_ one). They were about £1,400 each last time I checked.
I don't think I'm giving away anything I shouldn't by saying that SEM is the first 10 chapters of http://www.usingz.com/ taught in classroom form (see the course desc at: http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/pro/subjects/SEM.html and compare to the TOC of Using Z), and certainly I benefited by having read and understood it first (which was very challenging, but also SEM has kept coming in useful at the weirdest times in my professional career).
> an ideal way to test out the structure and style of a classroom
My understanding is that all the courses are explicitly available to anyone who wants to take them and can be booked by members of the public, although expect there to be priority to matriculated students for very popular courses (of which SEM is _not_ one). They were about £1,400 each last time I checked.
I don't think I'm giving away anything I shouldn't by saying that SEM is the first 10 chapters of http://www.usingz.com/ taught in classroom form (see the course desc at: http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/pro/subjects/SEM.html and compare to the TOC of Using Z), and certainly I benefited by having read and understood it first (which was very challenging, but also SEM has kept coming in useful at the weirdest times in my professional career).