Foreign Perspectives

One of the problems in doing three separate Open University courses at once is that the timetables they run to are completely independent of one another.

Thus I find myself looking at the prospect of doing the End Course Assessment for the cardiology course, the third TMA for the human biology course and the first TMA of the astronomy course all in the same week. Fortunately, that week is the third week of March so at least I have the chance of spacing the assignments out over the next month and a bit. Not quite so much as I’d like to though as part of the cardiology assignment involves submitting an essay plan to the tutor sometime in February and the astronomy assignment requires some practical work to be in hand by then and with our weather that’s very much hit and miss.

What I’m still amazed at is how quickly I’m managing to get through the courses. All being well, I’m on schedule to finish the course text for the human biology course in the next week or so which should let me get going on the notes for that which’ll definitely be required come exam time in June. I finished all of the reading for the cardiology course before Christmas so it “only” has the end of course assessment to be done which looks fairly doable at the moment though I’ve not actually started on it yet so that opinion could change very easily. I’m getting through the astronomy reading quite well though I suspect that I’ll be needing to go over a few things again for the assignment as it’s proving to be a more difficult course than originally expected.

Interestingly, courtesy of the astronomy course I have been assigned a “pathway tutor” as part of the pilot project. What that means is that I will retain that tutor throughout the course of my physics degree with the OU. Previously, one of the consistent comments that they’d received was that all the courses were entirely independent which, whilst nice in some respects, meant that a lot of people felt a little at sea when they’d finished a course and weren’t always that sure what they should do next or for that matter how they should go about designing the perfect sequence of courses for them. In the past that planning assistance has come from the regional centres officially and a number of course forums inofficially. Neither are ideal. The official source involved people who didn’t always have the knowledge of what was entailed in particular subjects whilst the unofficial route produced advice that might have been intended to be helpful but wasn’t always as it couldn’t take into account the particular backgrounds of those enquiring nor did those replying have anything like the full picture of what was coming up in a particular degree programme anyway.

So far, it’s in typical OU style: it’s there if you want to use it but if you’ve your own ideas you’re free to ignore it.