Foreign Perspectives

Archive for February, 2010

Now that I’ve sort-of decided on what courses I’ll be doing over the next couple of years it’s more or less a matter of waiting ’til the registration period opens and signing up.

Of course, it’s not quite as perfect as that given the OU change the courses on offer each year so if you’ve a reasonable list of courses you’d like to do chances are that there will be at least one change in the running order each year. Complicating things even more is that they’re gradually moving from a February to October cycle to an October to June one which means that if you’re planning more than a year or two in advance, you’re going to have to make some changes. This year there’s also the matter of them doing away with the named science degrees so me and many others are rethinking the sequence of courses that they’re doing with a view to hitting their named degree while it’s still available.

Thus far, I’ve been lucky this year in that there’s been no change in The physical world (S207) which starts as planned in October. However, there is the option for me to accelerate my progress with the physics degree my slotting in Using mathematics (MST121) next January. That would mean that I’d be overlapping one of the major courses (S207) with what should be the relatively easy (for me) MST121. That does beg the question: why do MST121 at all if it’s going to be so easy? Well, thanks to the regulations for the physics degree I need to either do that or something like the introductory science course (looks interesting but gives me 30 points more than I need) or a technology course (also interesting). In principle, MST121 seems to be the most useful of the trio of options.

It’s usually not necessary to enrol incredibly early for the OU courses but given the number of people who admit to intending accelerating the progress on their science degrees I suspect it could be prudent to enrol somewhat earlier than usual this year. That will certainly be the case for the summer schools which are in their last run in 2011 though enrolment for them doesn’t open ’til mid-October.

Most people don’t consider it a big deal if their house (ie buildings) and home (ie content) insurance isn’t with the same company. After all, why not just go for the cheapest in both categories?

That sounds fine and it may well save you some money but the problem with the UK home insurance market is that insurance companies that do content insurance have a list of stuff that counts as being “content” and a different list of stuff that counts as being “buildings”. Unfortunately, these lists aren’t completely identical between the various companies so you can find some things listed as “content” by one company that will appear on the “buildings” list of another company. That discrepancy is why it’s essential to keep both policies with the same company.

Most of the time it won’t matter. After all, clearly the bricks are part of the building and clearly the furniture is part of the content. What about something like an outdoor BBQ that incorporated a seat made from bricks? It might seem a somewhat contrived example but there are lots of similar grey areas that insurance companies create through these different lists.

Don’t forget too that if, even if you’re lucky enough to have any problem that arises completely covered by two different companies, that means that you’re looking at two separate insurance excess payments which these days can mean anything up to £1000 or so.

Due to a peculiar combination of circumstances, I find myself doing four courses simultaneously at the moment which doesn’t seem like an overly good idea on the face of it.

However, whilst I’m now at the “worst” of it with three assignments due over a two week period about a month from now, it doesn’t seem that bad in practice. That’s down to planning (or “panicking early” as some would say) in that I’m running more than a month ahead with all but one of the course texts and have, in principle, a couple of weeks slack to play with if need be.

What’s taking a surprising amount of time is the cardiology course which, as a level one 15 point course, should be taking the least. The final assignment for that looks like it’ll take getting on for twice the time that the comparable assignments in the two level two 30 point courses will take. That’s not so surprising with hindsight in some ways though: 15 point courses aren’t long 10 pointers but 30 point courses done over half the time which in turn means that I’m effectively doing 100 points worth of courses right now.

Still, one of the four finishes next month and another the month afterwards so I’ll be back to a normal workload for a while.

Although I’ve just got the second human biology assignment back that’s enough to get me over the pass mark. Well, apart from the exam that is.

Since I don’t now need to submit any more assignments (there are two to go) any that I do submit can only serve to increase the overall mark which is a nice place to be in. If nothing else, it removes any assignment pressure that there has been to date.

That’s not to say that I won’t be working to improve the mark in the last couple of assignments. The marks have been good but not evenly distributed amongst the various sections of the assignments which means that there’s a lot of marks still to be had and, seemingly, the majority of them relatively easily since I’ve been doing rather well in what’s arguably the hardest question category and not so well in the one that should be easiest.

I’ll have to get going on the next assignment this week as otherwise I’ve assignments for three separate courses due in the third week of March which is a pile-up that I’d much rather avoid.

“Ok, I’m high IQ and easily bored” is how a recent comment on one of the Open University forums begain and it pretty much immediately sparked off something of a war which is still running. I’ll grant that the original poster was rather insensitive to say the least in her post but it is an interesting topic.

To begin with the OU is an open access outfit which means that for almost all courses you don’t need to provide any kind of proof that you can do them before you sign up. The net effect of this is that the dropout rate in first year courses in any subject is generally 40 to 50%. This isn’t solely because people are signing up for courses that they just don’t have the brainpower to do though. As with all part-time courses the dropout rate is a little higher because people have real lives that interfere with their studies. And, of course, there’s quite a lot of people who sign up for courses and don’t fully appreciate what’s involved before they begin.

But, does a high IQ actually help you when you’re studying? Well, yes, obviously it does. The question though is just how much it helps and that’s a more difficult question. One that I suspect is impossible to answer before you’ve tried out one of the OU courses.

From my own experience, it would appear that you can try out just about any course to get a general feel for how well you will do with them taking into account your IQ and indeed all your personal experiences. For example, although the OU recommend around 16 hours per week for a 60 point course and 8 for a 30 point course, I find that in most cases I need less than half that time. The one exception was a 60 point English course which I managed with about 3 hours a week vs the 16 recommended.

Obviously the IQ will be a significant factor in helping you to understand material that is radically different from anything you’ve done before. However, don’t underestimate the effect of previous experience. The reason that English course took 3 hours a week rather than the six or seven that I’d expected was that I’d done similar work in French & Spanish to that in parts of the English course. Similarly, I am going through my current astronomy course at a frightening rate because I’ve met a number of the concepts before.

So, yes, a high IQ will certainly help with the OU as it does everywhere else. However, don’t underestimate the benefit that you’ll get from prior experience of the subject as that seems, for me, to be at least as significant.