Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Biology’ Category

Whilst I’m getting into the swing of the human biology course, the cardiovascular diseases one is something else together.

In principle, the human biology course as a level 2, 30 point course should clearly be harder than the cardiovascular diseases courses which weighs in at level 1 and only 15 points. However, at the moment the reverse is very much the case although it’s early days for both courses.

With the human biology course, we’ve moved through a very easy going introductory chapter, onto a much more serious one on the structure of cells, through a long list of aspects of nutrition to finish with a very thorough going through (literally!) of the digestive system. I can’t say that I remember all of that as yet though all being well, after I’ve ran up my notes for it things will be somewhat clearer.

The cardiovascular course kicked off with quite a terminology loaded introductory chapter before going straight into the detail of how the cardiovascular system works. If nothing else, when I come across the same topic in the third book of the human biology course, it’ll seem really simple in comparison! Still, at least the next couple of chapters look like a much easier ride and the assignment questions look reasonably doable (there’s no exam for this).

The reason for the apparent discrepancy in the actual and apparent level of these courses is largely down to how the OU assign levels to courses. In practice, it’s the assignments and exam (if any) that are taken to establish the level of the course rather than the course content. Thus, the assignments in the cardiology course are easier than those in the human biology course. On the other hand, the apparent level of each course from the students point of view is very different: if it were me, I’d have put the cardiology course at level three and if the assignments matched the complexity of the first couple of chapters that’s where it would be.

Personally, I’d have preferred it to have been set at level three although that would have meant I’d not have done the course for a few years. As it is, I suspect that the dropout rate will be very high for the cardiology. As per usual, I’ll be too stubborn to drop out but will be mainly looking on it as pre-revision for the cardiology section of the human biology course.

Thanks to the Child Development exam last week and the revision for it over the previous month, I only got around to signing up for Understanding cardiovascular diseases (SK121) a matter of days ago but this morning the website was already up for me.

That meant that I could download loads of course related stuff and in particular the full text of the course book which in turn meant that I could formally start the course this morning. So far, it’s not too bad though there’s a serious amount of medical terminology in the first chapter. I’m going to ignore most of that for the moment on the basis that they’re bound to come back to it in more detail later on in the course.

It’s the first full online course that I’ve done so no live tutorials but instead there’s an online forum where “tutorials” will be held, starting the week after next. Not sure how that’ll go though if the first one is anything to go by they’ll take me a lot less time than the suggested time listed in the course guide. I’m expecting that’ll be the case for many aspects of the course since it’s a level 1 course which means there’s lots of “this is how a course works” material. All being well, that’ll let me get considerably ahead of the course schedule as I’d like to have the final assignment completed before my February course starts which means I need to finish almost two months ahead of the formal timetable.

The nature of the course means that it’s attracted a massive number of health professionals on it. Presumably they’ll know a whole bunch of the terminology which is pretty much totally new to me; were the tutorials in person ones I’d have been left in the dust I expect!

If nothing else, this course should give me some practice at doing two courses simultaneously which will be handy to get me through 2010 which looks like being a year of overlapping courses. Having said that, SK121 is covering ground that I’ll also be doing in the Human Biology course albeit with a lot more detail in SK121 presumably. The other overlapping courses seem likely to be quite different thus less scope for semi-revision with them.

One of the advantages of the Open University is that you can do any of the level one courses without any prior knowledge. Surprisingly perhaps there are a whole heap of essentially medical courses within that level one range.

For instance if you’ve a bit of a family history of heart trouble you might consider doing Understanding cardiovascular diseases which covers everything from the treatment of those who’ve had a heart attack, how to go about avoiding one through to the medical aspects of it. To be honest it’s one course that I reckon just about everyone should do: knowing how to avoid getting a heart attack has to be knowledge worth having. If you really get the finger out, you can start that in November.

In a similar vein, there’s Diabetes care which with the drastic rise of type 2 diabetes seems something that a lot of people should know about too (the next course is in May). Alongside these are the cancer, nutrition and obesity courses and there’s also the likes of Infectious Disease if you work up to that through level two courses.

If you get really get carried away with it (which would be easy to do: they’re very interesting courses) you can even pick up a Life Sciences degree.

As usual, the last few days before an exam are a peculiar mix of panic cramming and looking forwards to the courses coming up.

The ED209 exam is a little peculiar in that of the three questions on the paper, we’ve already been given one (it ain’t as easy as that sounds!) which means that we’ve “only” to choose two more from the six on offer on the day. Unfortunately, it’s not a straight 2 from 6 as you’ve to answer one question on two of the three books on the course.

I find that the seen question is throwing something of a wobbler with my revision. The idea is that you basically treat that question as though it were the seventh assignment which is fine, except that it means you’ve to try and learn off the text of the answer so that you can write it out on the day which seems a bit daft. Not only that, but you’ve to write it, not type it as with the other assignments which also introduces the problem that you need to work out just how much you can write in about an hour.

Slightly odd at this point is that I’ll be branching off into a number of biology courses for a while and leaving the psychology behind for a bit. What’s coming up right away is the Human Biology course (SK277) which looks really interesting and, so far, relatively doable despite it being my first biology course in a very long time indeed. That’ll be followed by Biological Psychology (SD226) which looks like an interesting mix of biology and psychology. Then there’s the summer school: Investigative Biology (SXR270) to round out the coming year.

After that it’s the usual hazy plan at the moment. In theory, I should be doing Exploring Psychology in October but if the biology courses turn out to be as interesting as they appear to be from this distance then I’m thinking of continuing on with Infectious Disease (S320) and its residential, Molecular Basis of Human Disease (SXR376). Possibilities following that include another sequence of biology courses in the form of a new one starting that October, followed by Molecular and Cell Biology (S377) and finally Plants, Pigments and Light (SXR376) if it gets the rumoured extention in its life. And then it would be back into the psychology. But we’ll see.