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Having signed up for the Geosciences honours degree. it was a bit of a surprise when the OU announced earlier this year that they were phasing it out and replacing it with a new Natural Sciences Degree. After a lot of waiting the details are finally out and I am relieved to say that my plans to include the existing geology L2 & L3 summer schools are still valid. Details here: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/qualification/b64.htm Time has been rather short over the last year, and S104 has accounted for quite a bit of my spare time. Being a 60 point course the expected workload is 16 hours a week and runs for 8 months. It is broken up into eight modules and each has its own book to work through:
For each of these modules you get a interactive computer marked assignment (iCMA) plus tutor marked assignmenets (TMA) which you have to submit on a regular basis and to set dates. Things start out pretty gently and start to ramp up once you get to book four which has six weeks allocated to it, as has book 5. The other vary between 2-4 weeks depending upon the contents of the module. When the whole kit arrives it can seem quite daunting on the mountain you have ahead of you, but the pace of the course quickly eats it’s way through and you will rapidly finding yourself writing 700 words on the development of the geological history of SW England, or calculating the wavelength of light emitted from a celestial body without realising how much you have covered on study skills as well as the general science involved. You will be assigned to a tutor group and have regular day schools which are optional but highly recommended. However be selective about the days, the agenda will be published in the forum before hand and certainly in the early days there is quite a bit of repetition on what is covered. You will have a number of group activities to do which require some research, publishing your results on the forum and discussing the results. Your contribution here does make up some of your marks as you will be asked to submit some of the info in TMA’s. The course is constant work, trying to keep ahead by a week or two will pay off when you have busy times. For me it was the biology book which made up 6 weeks after 6 weeks of chemistry which I found the hardest part to get going. My interest in biology is limited so this seemed a mountain to climb, but I found some interesting parts along the way. The final part of the course is made up of a iCMA and a ECA which needs to be submitted on paper to Walton Hall. This is no harder than anything you have done up to this stage but the majority of the course gets covered so do not underestimate the time it takes to finish this. There is a lot to cover ! Early August saw the results come out and I was very happy to come out with a distinction and my first higher education award – the Certificate in Natural Sciences I have been going rather slowly on this course, work getting in the way and I though I would have to aim for the October submission date, since with two weeks to go I was probably four weeks behind. The early chapters are heavy going with all the magma generation and production of the different types of magma but eventually it starts to click and things make more sense when you move forward. Eventually you emerge from the world of Volcanoes and start on Earthquakes and tsunamis. The Tsunami section was of particular interest because of its focus on the Sunda Trench tsunami of Boxing day 2004, where some friends were caught up in its effects on Sri Lanka (thankfully all ok). I decided to get my head down and see whether I could finish and get this one out of the way before the kit arrives in late August for my next course. After some hard work I managed to complete it and submitted the ECA last Sunday. Hardwork indeed and the ECA made you look into a lot of material, both course materials and external websites to be able to put together a good response (well I need to await the results to determine if I did indeed give good answers !). All done, an enjoyable course overall and you get to be introduced to a number of sources of information which I will certainly be using again.  One of the things about doing an OU course is that you get alerted to a variety of sources of information and items which would be of interest. Today’s item of interest is the picture (right) of a volcanic eruption. This picture to the right of of the Sarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan. The image was taken on the 12th June by astronauts on the International Space Station. More information is available from NASA here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=38985 It is a good day today as I have just seen that the results are in for my first OU course and having got a good overall mark I am very happy with that as my first attempt at an assessment such as this. It is very useful to get the feedback on the general performance of the course on answering the questions so whilst you do not get specifics on individual answers (other than Well Achieved, Achieved etc..) you do get a summary of how the question was answered and where people slipped up. Enough to identify where you had gone wrong. So one course down, 10 points in the bag … only 350 left to go before I get that Bsc(Hons) I have now received two emails about Mars being the closest to earth that is has been for 60,000 years on August the 27th 2009 and I appreciate the fact that people have been forwarding information which they think I will find interesting. Normally I would be interested, especially since having done a OU course on the planets I have gone out and bought a modest telescope and am spending time late evening looking up at the skies. Unfortunately this information dates back to 2003 when the close approach was true, although a lot of the hype far from the truth. So if you receive an email with a powerpoint attached entitled ‘Mars visible in the night sky’ or something similar, delete it as it is simply a hoax/spam and wait a year until it reappears and you can delete it once again. I seem to be in a position where I keep on taking on more and more. The OU courses to get the Geosciences degree being the largest one going and this I weekend decided to build a trebuchet with my boys so some medieval projectile flinging to happen soon. Add that to the of models I am building, one wooden ship model, several plastic aircraft time just keeps on getting eaten into. Oh yes and the water bottle rocketry to kick start again. More time is taken away from the websites I manage or are developing, Archery (when I can), playing my trombone in a Big Band and Concert Band (http://adband.org.uk) so practice which I need doesn’t get fitted in. Plus time which two small boys and a wife need, just to throw into the mix. Time management is something which needs to be worked on I think, plus the ability to say no …. now that is a problem .. I like to keep people happy. So why is time on my mind ? The last few years with ill health affecting a family member has rather focused my mind on what is important in life. Work/Career whilst being pushed as all important, and in some ways they are since bills get paid, but you can loose so much of life to work that the really important things get lost from sight. Today I received an email saying how the husband of someone on a email list I subscribe to died yesterday whilst on the tennis court. No warning, no previous health issues pointing in this direction, just a heart attack from the blue. What makes this even more tragic is that the wife had only just had clear scans from her cancer so a time for celebration cruelly snatched away. Makes you think of what is really important ….. Having got the planets course wrapped up I have been keen to get started on the next course and today the materials arrived for the Volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis course. First impressions are positive, it looks like there is more use of materials outside of the course book and the Teach Yourself book. There is a DVD of additional materials and some external websites which will be required, so this builds nicely upon what was required for the first course. Back to work for now and whilst this course is not scheduled to start for another two weeks, I will get down tonight and start working on this. Let the fun begin ! Well both parts of the End of Course Assessment have now been submitted so the waiting game is on for the results. The questions pushed the understanding of the course and whether you had gone through all of the materials. Fun to do but certainly made you work for your points. So now a couple of months wait to see how I did, but I do not think I will haev failed this one, just a question of whether I did well or not. Nothing to worry about as I believe that only the 10 points will count towards the degree. Just booked onto this course for my second short science course before deliving into the larger 60 point Exploring Science (S104) course at the end of the year. |
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