Foreign Perspectives

Archive for November, 2009

In normal universities you expect to meet loads of other students but the perception is that it’s a different matter in the OU.

However, if you’re following one of the recognised paths to a specific qualification you’ll often find that you’re with the same group of students for a fair number of years. For example, I was with pretty much the same group for the three years of my Diploma in French.

Where you can find yourself more on your own is if you’re not going along the normal sequence of courses to a qualification. For example, in my case I did the second course of the psychology degree first so my next course for it will be the first course in the sequence and therefore it’ll be a new group of people that I’ll meet.

Having said that, even in odd sequences it seems to be quite common to run across the same people through online forums though that never seems to be quite the same as meeting them in person. If you do want to go through your degree with a group of people that you’ve met in person it’s definitely better to go through the courses in your degree in the normal sequence.

Thanks to the funding issues that the Open University are being hit with I find that I, among many others, am having to rejig my planned schedule of courses into something that can seem slightly crazy sometimes.

For instance, to pick up a physics degree I will need to do two summer schools between now and 2011. Those are Observing the universe (SXR208) and Physics by experiment (SXR207).

Of those SXR207 definitely requires you to do The physical world (S207) which means that I need to do it in October 2010. Unfortunately, it has some pre-requisites in the form of a certain amount of mathematical skills so I was originally planning on doing Using mathematics (MST121) starting this February to refresh my 30 year old maths skills from the degree. However, it seems sensible to do at least one of the related courses to SXR208 too which means that the February slot will be filled by one of them.

Fortunately, the OU realise that scientists don’t always want to do major maths courses so there’s Maths for science (S151). Whilst that should be way below my ability in maths it’s a 10 pointer so I could run with that from February to April or July or May to July or October (the 10 point courses can be done over 3 or 6 months). Normally they recommend that you only do that if you’re not going to be doing MST121 but it looks like an easy way to get that refresher that I might need for S207 and besides would add what should be a very easy 10 points towards the degree.

In the February slot I hope to do Astronomy (S282) which will provide half the background for SXR208. Ideally the other half would come from Planetary science and the search for life (S283) but I doing that at the same time as S207 doesn’t appear viable and so I can’t do it ’til November 2011 at the earliest which is after the final presentation of SXR208. Fortunately, the short courses come to the rescue yet again with Planets: an introduction (S196) which I should be able to do alongside S207.

So instead of my sensible sequence of MST121, S207+SXR207, S282, S283, SXR208 I’ve ended up with S282, S151, S207+SXR207, S196, SXR208, S283 and MST121. Slightly peculiar but at least it seems doable, unlike the sequences some other people have been forced into thanks to the funding issue.

Starting a degree at level two causes me the minor problem that I’ll be short 60 points by the time I finish what would have ordinarily been the final course had I started at level one.

In the course of looking at how I might pick up those 60 points I’d already started on 30 of them courtesy of the human biology (SK277) course that I’m doing at the moment. That course opened my eyes to the interest of biology generally and the biology short courses in particular which comprise an interesting collection ranging from the likes of cardiology and diabetes through to obesity and nutrition, mostly in the form of 15 point courses. Scheduling-wise, it was cardiology that fitted best and seeing as something like 30% of all deaths are down to that, it seemed like something worth knowing about.

What I’d not allowed for was that this is very clearly a medical subject and the first couple of chapters of the book were seriously heavy going for me. I reckoned that none of the terminology would ever sink in but thing like atria and ventricles make sense to me now although I’m sure there’s a vast amount of the vocabulary that hasn’t yet sunk in.

Sadly, it looks like quite a number of the students in the group have already dropped out of the course. Out of a possible 25 or so, only five have had any input to the recent activity. Ordinarily, I’d have thought that participation in the online forum where the “tutorials” are conducted would be higher as you don’t get the “real-life” issues that generally stop people turning up at regular tutorials.

As usual, I will, of course, be just too stubborn to drop out but I’ll be researching  short courses a little more thoroughly before signing up in future. Certainly the 15 point ones as they seem, by and large, to be shorter versions of 30 point courses rather than a separate breed of course as the 10 point ones are.

Although we were working pretty hard in the hotel this time last year, I don’t know how we’d manage to fit it into our lives these days.

Monday to Friday it sometimes seems like we’re operating an almost full-time taxi service. From 7.30am to 9.30am we’re definitely full-time school organisers. For the first couple of months of P1 we’d a break of sorts to 11.30am before collecting John but at least it’s now up to 2pm. From 2pm to 3pm we’re getting the guys back home though on Tuesday’s we’re straight off to Kumon again.

Even Saturday isn’t free as we’re to get James to Kumon for 10am and with Wendy off to work in the afternoon there’s not much of the day left by the time she’s off. Somehow Sunday always seems to disappear though in different ways each week.

In between times, there’s the psychology degree that I’m doing too which is currently taking up a fair bit of time as I’m trying to get ahead of the official schedules with the two courses I’m doing at the moment.

And then there’s the ongoing admin relating to our attempts to close down our life in France which seems to be taking up even more time than actually running the hotel!

One of the great things about the Open University is that you can sign up for pretty much any course that takes your fancy yet that’s also one of the problems with it too from the student point of view.

It’s fine if you know what you want to do. No hassles with having to prove that you meet the entry requirements for a course: just register for the course and you’re accepted. That applies in exactly the same way for honours level courses as it does for those aimed at prospective students who have no prior qualifications at all.

As far as the different levels go, clearly the best plan is to start at the lowest level and work your way up. However, if, like me, you have some prior qualifications then you don’t have to go through the major hassles that can arise when you fancy doing something new but in a similar line to something you’ve done before.

Where you do hit a problem though is when you don’t really have a clear idea of where you’re headed with your qualification. The sheer number of courses can make selecting your next course quite a challenge. Not only that, but you can come seriously unstuck if the series of courses that you think you need isn’t the series that you really need. Apparently one student who’d set their heart on teaching thought that the best plan was to do all the courses listed in the education faculty and only found out some six years down the line that they’d have to start all over again.

For the really undecided there’s even the option of an “open” degree (the equivalent of the general degree of other universities) which can include pretty much any courses that are offered.