Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Open University’ Category

The final TMA of the astronomy course looked pretty much impossible to do at first glance and seems to be the cause of a substantial number of people seriously considering dropping out of the course if the forum comments are anything to go by.

The big difference between this one and the previous one is that it’s very much into the theoretical physics (ie mathematical) side of the course basically because it’s largely based on the cosmology section of the course where the heavy duty mathematics comes in. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s particularly difficult but what it does require is a completely different way of thinking about the questions. So, instead of looking up how to describe the appearance of a galaxy you get questions like “Using information from An Introduction to Galaxies and Cosmology, estimate R(t1) / R(t0)” which require a major shift in problem solving techniques from what went before.

Once you have flicked over to the mathematical approach, the seemingly impossible questions turn out to be fairly easy, albeit involving scary looking numbers most of the time. Essentially what’s required for most of them is to find a formula in the book which refers to the pieces of information that you’re given and getting out the calculator. Even the most complex doesn’t require more than a relatively simple rearrangement of a formula given in the book and seeing as they go so far as quoting the chapter in the book from which the questions are taken, it’s not too difficult to find the necessary formulae.

What it does show is that the guidance in the “Are you ready for S282?” guide that the “level of maths required for S282 is not high”, whilst true, is rather misleading. No, the level of maths isn’t that high but what it does require is that you are able to think like a mathematician.

That’s the final TMA that counts towards the result. There is a CMA to do but that doesn’t affect the mark so whilst I’ll have a look at it, I’ve not decided whether or not to do it as ’tis time to get going on the revision.

Quite why it is, I don’t know but the astronomy TMAs have all taken me an awful lot more time than expected to do and, of course, the final one is no different.

It seems that I’m not the only one with this problem as an awful lot of people seem to be having serious difficulties with this one. All for the same reason too: it appears to be seriously difficult. And yet, once it clicks, it’s actually quite easy to do.

The key thing to do is to basically ignore that astronomy label and consider it purely as an exercise in mathematics for almost all of the questions. Thus, if it asks you to calculate the radius of some orbit what you need to do is to look for some equation in one of the chapters of the book referring to that question that can be used to calculate the radius in terms of the information that you have to hand. That seems even more so for the seemingly much more complicated cosmology question. After all, at first glance when you’re asked to calculate the critical density of the universe, I’m sure that most peoples’ reaction would be “eh?”, but it’s very easy to answer that one (no, really, it is).

Which “just” leaves me with about 1 1/2 questions to do. I’d have done them this evening but with the spurt of progress my brain went into meltdown!

As to whether my answers are actually right or not, who knows? but at least I have some kind of answer when yesterday I was seriously contemplating handing it in with questions unanswered.

As usual, this information comes out in dribs and drabs which is a bit frustrating but, up to now, the leaks have been fairly encouraging.

The latest is about the compulsory courses which are the level one science courses (S104 plus either SXR103 or its non-residential equivalent S155), S288 (the replacement for the level two residentials) and one of the level three project courses (SX*390). Of these, the oddity is the level three courses because there’s one corresponding to each of the existing named science degrees so one would have thought that these would all have been rolled into the level three equivalent of S288 (or that S288 would have been split into the equivalent S*288).

For those who have already started along the path of a named degree but who won’t make it by December 2014, whether or not they’ll need to do S288 will be assessed individually. Somehow I suspect that anyone who’s done, say, the L2 biology and who would have met the biology requirements will be approved, if that’s not the case then you might not be approved in that you’d have ordinarily received an open degree in that situation.

Incidently, as far as the information about S288 goes so far it looks much more interesting than the original snippets of information protrayed it months ago. In effect it’s four or five courses rolled into one and will allow you to follow pathways through it corresponding to each of the existing residentials which it replaces. Moreover there are short residentials built into it in various forms (there’s not a whole lot of information out about it yet) although you can similarly follow a non-residential pathway too. One thing that really puzzles me now is how they’ll cope with the different charging of residential and non-residential pathways and, if there are a number of these mini-residentials, how the students will afford the travel costs for them.

It turned out that the writing up didn’t take all that long once I got around to sitting down to actually do it.

I ran with the experiment which we’d done on the respiration rates of skin and brain tissue basically because that seemed the most complete experiment that we’d done. Second choice would have been the one on the chlorophyll response to light but, as with nearly all the plant experiments, that one didn’t pan out quite as expected.

I had a look at the equivalent write-up of the virtual experiments that I did for the psychology course last year and they’re totally different. The overall feel of the psychology one is very much that of a virtual experiment with little of the gritty detail that the biology one contains. Sadly, next year is the last run of this particular biology residential but at least I’ve the two level 3 ones to look forward to over the next two years and, perhaps, to two chemistry ones as well.

All that remains now is to get that printed, packaged and posted and then I’ll have no excuse not to finish off the astronomy TMAs.

Although my plan was to leave starting this one ’til October, I couldn’t resist taking a little peek at it last night.

It feels very much like the part of the chemistry A-level I did which covered the practical applications of  chemistry. Just as that drew me into chemistry back then, so too it did last night and I found my “little peek” being enough to finish the first chapter.

That first chapter covers quite a bit of ground running from the very basics of atoms and molecules right up to the structure of the alkanes. Quite a leap if you’ve not done chemistry before but many bits of it came back to me.

The second chapter which I’ve almost completed scouts around the development of aspirin, using it to introduce a number of chemistry concepts as it goes along. I’d say that it would be moving at a fair pace if you’d not encountered any of this before and even for me it was starting to introduce quite complex ideas towards the end.

Somehow I suspect that I’ll be finishing this well ahead of my original timetable of pre-Christmas although there are a couple of TMAs for other courses that need doing over the next couple of weeks so I’ll mainly be looking at this in the evenings.