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A reader (Jim) added this comment to my post on Linux and NetBeans and it got me thinking in a bit more detail about all the courses I’ve done from 2001 to now and what ‘unites’ a lot of quite disparate subject areas:
Going from English and Philosophy, to Psychology and Computing into Design is certainly an unusual path to take!
[...]
You should have a look at T214 and T306, the Systems courses, I think you’ll find they bring together a lot of what you seem to be interested in.
I suppose the common theme with many or all of the subjects I’ve worked with is the idea of the object of study (whether that’s a literary work, Java program, AI simulation of emergent systems, social scientific ‘phenomenon’ etc) exists as a system with linked and interacting parts, rather than a lot of details to remember – one of the reasons I’m not too keen on subjects such as “pure” science, history etc … Maybe this is a way of approaching study (or approaching anything, really) rather than being inherent in the subject itself, and some subjects are just more ‘open’ to being viewed in this sort of way.
In that sense I agree it’s an unusual path but also linked at a ‘deeper’ level… the difficulty I suppose is how to get this across to people rather than coming over as something of a ‘drifter’ or ‘indecisive’ in that I’ve seemed to study a little about a lot of things rather than a lot about increasingly specialised areas… the main reason a PhD doesn’t appeal at all (though I would like to be Dr. Jane Doe of course!)
It just makes a lot more sense to view something like language, a computer program, designed object etc etc as being made up of a lot of small parts and that it’s combining the parts (and knowing how to combine them!) that causes a system to be ‘good’ or otherwise… A lot of the non-academic stuff I’m interested in, such as making music (I play guitar and bass) follow the same principle really, with separately interacting elements making up something ‘more’ that’s ultimately viscerally rather than intellectually experienced.
The Systems courses are something I’ve looked at before and put on the mental ‘future courses’ list but not pursued in any detail yet – mostly because as 60 point courses they are quite a commitment and expense considering that now I’ve already done a Bachelor’s and a Master’s it’s primarily for ‘fun’ and personal development… though I think mostly the aversion to 60 points on one course is because it then cuts off options for what can be done additionally (in terms of scheduling, and also with the maximum 120 points or 1 month overlap for more rule). The worst part of having to make a decision to do something is the sense of cutting off other options and that’s probably why I’ll work my way through all interesting (to me) subject areas and miss out anything that appears to me just an unrelated collection of details to memorise!
As you may know if you’ve read through the back entries of this blog, occasionally I do a search on the ‘course choices’ part of the OU site to find any new courses that are being presented (rather than the probably more common method of having a subject you are interested in, and then searching for that!)
ED840 – Child development in families, schools and society (which I studied in 2004) has now reached its last presentation and is being replaced by ED841 – Understanding children’s development and learning. From the information given it looks like it’s basically a rewrite and update rather than a whole new course covering completely different topics, though there do seem to be some new parts. It looks like more use is being made of the multimedia bits that the OU normally use on courses (DVDs etc) and the set books to buy are different. There’s still a research project with a similar sort of basis to the ones we did for ED840 (observational study of a teaching/learning situation with children and/or adults) though it seems like now the small scale study is used as a basis for writing a project proposal for a bigger project.
From a quick look at the MSc in Psychology page ED841 occupies the same ‘slot’ in the courses as ED840 did when I did it, though there’s another change there – new course D822 Investigating the social world as a successor D820 (which I also took in 2004) starting in May 2009. The focus of D822 seems quite different; much more practically orientated (research project etc). I wrote about D821 Investigating the psychological world previously and said then that I didn’t imagine D820 was being replaced with this as it is primarily psychology (rather than general social science), it seems like actually they are equivalent in the curriculum and that (from the D821 page)
It is possible, however, to count Investigating the Social World (D822) in place of D821 in these qualifications. D821 can also be counted towards any of the other postgraduate qualifications in social sciences in place of D822.
Mostly it’s just good to keep up with what is changing in areas I have worked with in the past, even if not currently: I don’t know if I’ll go back to the social sciences (it would be nice, but what puts me off the postgraduate courses mostly is the cost..) but keeping track of what’s being done differently is actually quite enlightening!
I took the MSc in Psychology in 2005 and since then there’s been a new course introduced to replace D820 (The Challenge of the Social Sciences) which is D821: Investigating the psychological world. I use ‘replace’ in the sense of occupying the same spot in the MSc pathway as the contents of the two courses appear to be quite different. D821 seems more research oriented in that it involves planning a project, doing a literature review, ethical considerations, and also appears to involve more group work online for some of the activities. (D820 didn’t involve anything like this; there was a course conference on First Class but mostly just for discussion – not to actually carry out any of the work.)
The assessment information states that there will be 3 TMAs, and an ECA (end of course assessment) which is a report on the research, in place of an exam.
Interestingly it is also compulsory – assuming you haven’t already done D820 - for the MSc in Forensic Psychology and Criminology which I wasn’t aware existed but sounds interesting!
The description page for the MA in Social Sciences (which I considered initially as an alternative to the MSc in Psychology) has not yet been updated though so is still saying D820 as the compulsory course – I can’t imagine that that will be replaced by D821 which is more specifically psychology-related, so I wonder what the plan is there…
Please OU, come up with some sort of RSS feed for new/updated courses and qualifications or at least provide a way to find the new qualifications. (I have now found the way to search for new courses!)
As part of the course DT840 – “Introduction to Research: basic skills and survey methods” – one of the tasks we carried out was to come up with a research proposal on a topic of our choice, revise the proposal, design the study methodology (some sort of survey method… a la the name of the course!), come up with the “fieldwork” material (interviewer instructions, questionnaire, etc as relevant) and write about how the study would actually be carried out i.e. number of participants, sampling method, how the data will be analysed etc… The course does not involve actually carrying out the project itself, more the planning stages, but I think it would be good preparation for the research methods dissertation, in which I believe a project is carried out and then the results written up.
I went through quite a few ideas and alternative versions before deciding on the topic of my proposal/plan (which eventually related to motivations etc for young people choosing distance learning rather than ‘traditional’ university – without going into too much boring detail!). One of the ideas I considered was the influence of ‘typography’ on the perception of the writer by the person reading the document. The idea didn’t get planned in that much detail but would have been along the lines of obtaining suitable text (from where?), creating versions in several different typographical styles based on a review of research literature about readability, what is the best font to use for clarity of web vs print etc, and asking research participants to read the texts and then based on their ‘impression’ of the writer, to answer what they thought about the writer such as whether they are male/female, successful/unsuccessful etc, for various different traits (traits decided on from the research literature into personality etc) and analyse the data to find out whether particular fonts/styles have a “statistically significant” effect on the perception of the writer.
However although I have always thought this was a good subject for research I never got any further or put the ideas down in a similar form!
Having a look today a study on a similar subject has been done here:
The Effect of Typeface on the Perception of Email
A. Dawn Shaikh, Doug Fox, Barbara S. Chaparro
http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/91/POF.html
The write-up has some interesting conclusions, in brief that based on the data collected, the choice of typeface does seem to have a significant effect on the perception of the writer, for certain traits.
I was thinking about this topic in relation to our TMAs. For relatively ‘factual’ subjects such as programming, the marks for the answer depend on whether the code works and (if required) whether the coding ‘conventions’ required by the course have been used i.e. there are marks for style (on certain criteria) as well as the code actually working. However in more ‘subjective’ subjects (in some sense) such as literature, philosophy, history and actually most ‘arts’ subjects I wonder whether the font chosen by the student does affect the result in some way? Obviously “choice of font” is not a real criterion to grade essays on but based on some of this research I wonder whether there is a factor at work where essays in particular fonts are perceived as more ‘authoritative’ (or whatever) than they would be if written in a different font?
Clearly this would not apply only at the OU, but anywhere written work is produced and marked!
(I must admit that my TMAs for quite a few of the courses for the BA(Hons) were written in Comic Sans… Garamond for the masters level courses and Arial for the technology short courses (robotics and internet, law and society) and the programming and interaction design courses, also will be for M366 when it starts. Does this say more about choice of typeface to reflect the perception of the subject?!)
… alternatives to Windows that is 
Historically the OU has always catered towards a Windows platform primarily – understandably so (I’m not sure what the exact market share is for Windows vs other OS but I think probably around 90% or more… don’t have any figures on this to hand though!. Given the number of students using Windows compared to any other platform I guess it doesn’t make sense for the university to actively ‘support’ non-Windows systems for most courses – ie producing versions of the software that can be run straight from the disc/website for Mac users, etc.
For many of the courses it doesn’t necessarily matter which OS we are using, just to have access to a suitable word processor for example (e.g. when doing the Humanities degree, pretty much all of it was ‘just’ essay writing, which can be done on any suitable platform!) One of the limitations is now we are using the ‘eTMA’ (electronic document submission) system, the word processed document has to be sent in in ‘Word 97 or later compatible’ format, which isn’t a problem most of the time as OpenOffice (and probably other “alternative” office software, but I haven’t used them enough to know) has the option to save in many different formats including Word 97/XP.
Personally I would like to be able to submit TMAs as a ‘pdf’ thus ensuring that the layout and appearance is the same whatever system is being used to look at it, but I appreciate this makes it rather difficult for the tutor to make appropriate comments on the ‘script’ etc. (It is technically possible to annotate PDFs but I believe this requires the user to have ‘Adobe Acrobat’ or similar which is paid software, rather than ‘Reader’ or equivalent which is just a viewer for the PDF.)
For some of the courses I’ve done, proprietary software is distributed (with the OU having obtained the appropriate licence, obviously!) and this mostly comes in a Windows only version. For example for DT840 (research methods) the course makes use of ‘SPSS’ a data processing and analysis package, and I believe this only comes on the CD as a Windows version. It may be possible to get hold of a Mac or GNU/Linux version, I’m not sure, but this would have to be obtained separately and probably paid for.
I’m therefore quite happy that for a lot of the recent courses I’ve done, there has been a way to run a lot of the course software on ‘alternative systems’, as I have a duat boot Windows/Linux system but 99%+ of my time is spent using Linux, this includes for the internet, email, word processing, spreadsheets etc. The software we’ve been using for M255 and will be for M366 is “proprietary” software but in most cases is freely distributed by the relevant companies so I have got hold of the Linux/Unix compatible versions and installed them, then used them to run the course examples etc with few problems. (This includes the M366 stuff which I am not meant to have started yet due to the impending doom exam!)
Let’s hope the OU carries on using software with ‘freely available’ alternative operating system versions… this is good news indeed
There was a surprise certificate in the post which I thought was going to be for the MSc in Psychology (though certificates for awards being picked up at a ‘graduation’ (presentation of graduates) ceremony are supposed to be picked up at the end of the ceremony) so I was quite confused as to why they would be posting it. Turns out though that it was a Course Certificate for DT840, with the credit points (60), study hours (440 – !!!) and result (Distinction) on it. I wasn’t expecting it as I didn’t know any such thing existed. It was a pleasant surprise though, and I guess it means the MSc certificate will still be at the ceremony, which is a bit later.
The results for some of the courses (including DT840) are out, a bit earlier than expected! I was quite surprised to find I’d managed another Distinction! (but only just). What a relief, this means that the Masters is now finished and is hopefully a Masters with Distinction (have to wait and see when the transcript appears). I wasn’t sure about the requirement for a MSc with Distinction to have 90 or more points in post-foundation courses with a Distinction. DT840 is 60 of those points and I guess it is not counted as a foundation course, as it’s one of the options people can choose from as part of the ‘research methods’ section of the MSc. So fingers crossed!
It’s now 5 weeks until results day and it’s going quite quickly! The more I think about it though, the less sure I am that I’ve done “reasonably” well, as I thought initially on coming out of the exam. I know I didn’t want to do a postmortem on the exam but I’m glad I made a note of what the questions were that day, as the exam papers for this course are not released afterwards. Haven’t really thought of anything else I would have written even now, apart from one thing on the last question (an essay question – they can’t expect everything that might be relevant to be in there, though!)
I’ve been doing more work on M263 as well – now worked through Unit 4 and made a start on some of the questions for the TMA. It all looks straightforward – much like Part 1 really, there’s some ‘explanation’ type answers and some of the questions require code to be written, which wasn’t required in Part 1. So that should be quite interesting to see whether I can do all of them! Not sure where I am in relation to other people though – some people are already talking about TMA 02 (I think it’s due in January!) – this one is due on the 28th November, should be plenty of time.
There’s now a message on our StudentHome page saying that the results “should be available by Friday 16 December 2005″. The 14th wasn’t a bad guess then – just based on the fact that it tends to be a Thursday or late on the Wednesday rather than a Friday that they are posted. So I still think the 14th is more likely and that saying “by the 16th” allows for any technical problems, overloaded server (due to too many people checking for their results!), etc. Assuming it will be the Wednesday, that means it’s 6 weeks to go… somehow it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I have finished the MSc in Psychology!
The OU must have confidence in me that I’ll pass DT840 as they sent a letter about graduation ceremonies (actually it’s a standard letter that everyone on their last course for a ceremony-enabled qualification gets!) – details of all the venues and ‘what happens next’ with booking a ceremony etc.
When the results are out in December (assuming I pass) I’ll be able to book a ceremony online or by phone – I did the online booking for the BA(Hons) graduation ceremony in 2003 and it was very easy and efficient (even so, I didn’t like to “commit” myself to that ceremony – although I knew that was the one I wanted to go to! Mad…) so I’ll probably do online booking again. At this point I do intend to go to the ceremony whatever the grade of masters so it seems like everything is finally moving along!
Actually it must be only 6 and a bit weeks until the results are out (if my guess of the 14th December turns out to be right) which is not very long at all to wait really. Good thing for somebody impatient – though I do appreciate that the OU have thousands of exam scripts to get through. (I wonder where mine is now – I had the very first exam session but I don’t know if the scripts are sent off to the markers/whoever immediately or if they’re held somewhere. I suspect much of the latency is due to having to carry out statistical analyses on the spread of marks and variance etc rather than actually marking the things!)
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About the site
This blog is about my studies with the Open University - personal experiences and opinions of one student. All unofficial so don't accept anything here as 'gospel' unless specifically quoted from an authoritative source. (Some of the information here such as number of TMAs in courses may have changed since I took the course.)
Please do not make any decisions relating to the OU or your studies based only on what I have written here.
Quite a few of the visitors seem to be searching for TMA answers or exam papers. I don't have these as they are copyright and/or may be used to plagiarise work. However you are welcome to browse around for general information by category or month. Drop a line privately or via a comment if you want to get in touch! Comments are enabled but moderated (too much spam), I never censor a genuine comment.
If you are having problems with your course, please contact your tutor or course conference (if there is one) for 'official' help.
My OU history
Registered to start Oct 10:
M150 - Data, Computing and Information
T175 - Networked Living: exploring information and communication technologies
T151 - Digital worlds: designing games, creating alternative realities
Current:
M450 - The Computing Project
T307 - Innovation: designing for a sustainable future
M256 - Software Development with Java
Past:
2009:
M257 - Putting Java to Work
T211 - Design and Designing
2007/8:
M366 - Natural and artificial intelligence
2006/7:
M255 - Object Oriented Programming with Java
2005/6:
M364 - Fundamentals of Interaction Design
M263 - Building Blocks of Software
2004:
DT840 - Introduction to Research: basic skills and survey methods
D853 - Identity in Question
D820 - The Challenge of the Social Sciences
ED840 - Child Development in Families, Schools and Society
2003:
A319 - Literature in the Modern World
A103 - An Introduction to the Humanities
T182 - Law, the Internet and Society
T184 - Robotics and the meaning of life: things that think
2002:
E300 - English Language and Literacy
A210 - Approaching Literature
2001:
A211 - Philosophy and the Human Situation
U210 - The English Language: past, present and future
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