Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Open University’ Category

It’s the usual equation for me though seemingly never for an obvious reason.

With the archaeology the tutor has been giving really good comments on the assignments that I’ve put in. Just as well as I’ve studied neither history nor art subjects in any form for a very long time indeed.

So, in the first one I lost marks in leaving out what seems obvious in hindsight, namely the dates of the various events. I’d bandied about the terms for the periods alright, just not added the dates. Easy to fix obviously.

In the second I’d not put in enough in the way of references which seemed to drop a similar number of marks as the overall mark was much the same as for the first one. Not quite so easy to fix as I found out in the third one.

For the third one, there were dates everywhere and a page and a half of references which took ages to research. In this world archaeology course I thought that I’d take two empires as they suggested and add references from around the world. Net effect was that within the word count you couldn’t say a massive amount about those additional examples so 10% less than before! I think I fell into the trap of this course: it covers a lot of ground in a short time and leaves you with lots of examples whereas what’s really wanted at this level is an in-depth critique of a few cases with perhaps a short reference to other examples.

Which leaves the end of course assessment to do. There are two options on this one. In the first you’ve to look at the impact of cultural contact and movement which sounded good to me as there are lots of examples. For the second you’ve to choose three examples of the impact of population growth on the development of societies.

Prior to receiving the latest mark I’d decided to go for the first option as it seemed to allow the inclusion of loads of examples but I suspect that the second option is probably better as it would force me into concentrating more on fewer examples. The problem with doing that is that it depends on being able to find references to quite detailed aspects of the impact of population growth and in some really interesting societies there’s not a whole lot of detail to draw upon. So, for example, whilst presumably population growth had a major impact on the formation of early agricultural villages, there’s next to nothing to say about them.

The OU World Archaeology (A251) course is a peculiar beastie in many ways.

For a start, it’s a 30 point course which would normally mean that it would run either February to October or October to June. Instead it runs November to March which is a bit out of sync with other courses and also means that it runs at around a 60 point workload.

That “60 point” workload for a 30 point course means that it feels like it’s racing along, often at a headlong pace. Thus we covered the development of agriculture, cities and empires in three separate four week chunks and have an assignment every month.

The style of assignment changes radically too. The first one was the usual OU assignment based on the course texts, the second required a small research element outside the texts, the third requires a small amount from the texts and a lot of research and the final one looks like it will be all research. Quite a progression and one that finds me needing to do a lot more work for the third assignment due this week than I did for the previous two. The final one is supposed to run over three weeks rather than the one week for each of the previous ones.

On the whole though it feels more and more like you’re doing real archaeology, digging out information for yourself. The downside of that is that it means that this isn’t a course to be taken as lightly as many people do. It looks like an interesting course that you can just slot into even the tightest timetable but in reality it’s rather a full course with frequently massive amounts of reading to be done and increasing amounts of work to be done for assignments as the course progresses.

For all that, it is an interesting course. I just wish that they’d scheduled it over the normal 9 month timetable. That would have let me wallow in some of the topics it covers rather than just watch them race by.

If you’re starting with one of the main Open University level 1 courses, there can be quite a daunting amount of things to do before the course begins.

Wendy has just received her box of AA100 course texts and the course website opened yesterday too.

It’s one of those courses that is intended to be your first course with the university so there’s much more handholding material than you normally get from them. So much more in this case that I found it at an annoying level when leafing through the course guide although obviously whether you find it annoyingly helpful or just helpful will depend on you and your previous experiences.

Less helpful for a beginner was the amount of stuff on the course website. As a die-hard OU student I know that one of the most useful things that you can do is to get all the course resources downloaded onto your computer but in the case of AA100 that’s the task of several hours as there’s so much of it ranging from the course texts and course guides that most courses have these days through to a massive number of MP3 files. In tandem with that there’s the three DVDs and four DVDROMS that are handy to have on the computer too. You could spread all this copying over the duration of the course but it’s a lot easier to get it over and done with at the outset leaving “just” the course to deal with over the coming months. It also highlights any problems with the materials early and thus gives you more time to get any issues sorted out eg in Wendy’s case, the assessment CD was unreadable.

Worth checking too is that you have all the materials. In Wendy’s case that amounts to six books, four boxes of CDs/DVDs, an assessment DVD and a number of brochures. Newer courses tend to have more bits and pieces than older ones although these days increasing amounts of material are only available online.

Before you panic with the volume (and in some cases there’s a lot of volume: I could hardly lift the S204 box), after you’ve checked that everything is there, it’s best to start with reading the letter from the course team which’ll tell you a little bit about what you have in front of you. After that, it’s the course guide that’s the place to start. What you need to do next varies a lot between courses eg for AA100 there’s only one course guide so the course calendar or course map is your next port of call, S204 is such a large course that there’s an overall course guide and six separate unit guides.

Not too long after the course website opens you’ll find that you’ve acquired a tutor and, if your course has them, tutorial dates. Although you should aim to get to them all the really essential ones are the first one where study groups may get formed and the last one which concentrates on the exam. The in between tutorials usually discuss points related to the assignments.

After a bit of nagging and prompting, Wendy got around to filling the application for the Art and its histories (AA100) course several months ago.

One major complication in the application was her nationality in that it’s Australian and so non-European. That meant that we had a bit of a job showing the Open University that she was eligible for the UK fees. Although you’re supposed to have been living in Europe for the previous three years and in the UK at the time you apply, in practical terms the OU seem to assume that anyone British or Irish and quoting a UK address has been living here forever.

Wendy however needed to show that she was living in Europe for the previous three years. That might sound simple but in practical terms it isn’t in our case. The usual proof would be stamps in her passport but there aren’t any appropriate ones as the immigration people aren’t allowed to stamp her passport since she has a European residence permit (well, the entitlement to one as it hasn’t arrived yet).

What seemed to happen in the end when we made the final phone call was the manager handling applications figured that it was easier to just mark her as eligible for UK fees and thus bring in another £650 for the OU rather than worry too much about the lack of normal proofs that she has been in Europe for getting on for 10 years.

Anyway, we’re now organising the books for her and the course texts should be here in the next week or so.

One of the greatest strengths of the BBC/Open University link up from years back was that you got what would today be called deep links between the two. Thus you got co-productions that could just as easily have been normal BBC documentaries or OU programmes.

Sadly, that deep linking is no longer in place thus whilst the almost glossy brochure approach of Ancient Worlds that recently finished its run on BBC2 would have complemented perfectly the global reach of World Archaeology, there are no links in either direction. In days gone by there would have been at least a mention of the World Archaeology course on the Ancient Worlds website as a “if you’d like to have more information” type of link but instead there’s a reference list to a series of books. I’m not complaining about that reference list as it gives people a way to follow up the subject in more detail if they wish but it does seem a shame that the BBC/OU crosslinking is no longer there.

Oddly, the only linking from the OU to the BBC programme is via the OU course forum and that too seems a shame as a set of DVDs of the programme wouldn’t look that out of place were they to be included with the course. In fact, they would bring the subject to life as they have for me. It’s all very well reading about places like Uruk, but actually seeing the present day ruins is quite a different experience.