The final TMA for ED209 so ’tis on to revision
September 10th, 2009 | 
Author: Well, it’s almost out of the way. I’m currently sitting on 1850 words and 2000 is the target so I might run up that final 150 tomorrow. Or then again, I might just put it in as-is seeing as the mark I get on it won’t really affect the overall grade for this course that much.
Anyway, with the assignments out of the way the road is clear to start work on getting ready for the exam on October 21st. That work has two aspects for this course. First, there’s the seen question to consider. That’s the question that they’ve already given us but which we’ve to research two papers to support our argument on the day of the exam and, of course, there’s the small matter of drafting the answer in advance so that it’s “just” a matter of writing it out on the day.
Then there’s the revision for the other two questions on the paper. Frankly, that’s a nightmare for this course as there’s just so much of it. I managed to have a first run through of about half of it over the summer and it was a frightening experience. On the one hand, it was reassuring to find that there was a reasonable amount of it that I remembered but what wasn’t so good was just how long it took to go through it all (and I was “only” going through the Erica Cox notes!).
Finally, there’s the problem that I have at the moment which is that I haven’t a clue how to even make a start on answering a worryingly large proportion of the questions on the past papers. Hopefully, that will change over the next six weeks or so! At this point I’m wondering if it would have been a good idea to go to one of the revision weekends for the course… bit late now though there’s one this weekend.
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Hello, I am starting ED209 in Feb. I am becoming increasingly worried about it as so many people seem to hate it! Oh no!What have I let myself in for……Well you have got to the end I hope you did well in your exam-good luck in the future!!!
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I wouldn’t say that we hate ED209 as such… it’s just that it’s quite like a 90 point, level 3 course at times and not everyone has the flexibility in their life to fit in a workload like that.
Having said that, there’s a lot of help around for it. For example, see http://www.foreignperspectives.com/revision-notes for pointers to some of the revision notes available. Once you’ve chosen your topic for the seen question, buy the Erika Cox notes for it as I found that one of the papers the OU refer you to was just too much paper for me to take in (over 40 pages of research paper!).
Despite all that the dropout rate is 40% or so which is about typical for a first year course. In practical terms, it is a first year course as there are so many people coming directly into it from Early Years programmes, or for that matter skipping DSE212 and making it their first psychology course as I did (not a recommended thing to do!). What did surprise me though was that getting on for 20% of the people at our exam centre didn’t turn up and almost 10% left within the first hour. Even of those that stayed I know a couple who basically did only the seen question and nothing more as their mind went blank; one of those was someone I’d pegged for a possible distinction too!
It IS doable but if you can do it, get the first course book and start reading now. The edition you need is on ouw.co.uk (search for ED209) but sometimes you can get it on ebay or amazon (make sure it’s the edition on the ouw page though). Each book lasts about two months so you only need the first one as you’d have your own copy of the others before you needed them.
All the best with your study!
Arnold