Thanks to everyone who voted in the SSC results poll – an overwhelming 100% in favour of the OU continuing to provide percentage scores along with the Learning Outcomes comments. Unfortunately, the contacts I’ve had with some folks at the OU & OUSA doesn’t give me much hope seeing anyone’s minds changed – a [...]

News of this one was posted to the Course Requests conference earlier in the week, and is right up my alley:
Certificate in Introductory Astronomy (in association with Manchester University)
Level 1 Certificate. It requires 60 points at level 1.
Of the 60 points, you need a minimum of 20 points and maximum of 40 points from [...]

If you really want to convert the Learning Objective comments to a score, this would work:

Assign a score of 0-4 to each Learning Objective, so that:

0 = Not Achieved
1 = Not Quite Achieved
2 = Just Achieved
3 = Achieved
4 = Well Achieved

Multiply out the number of Learning Outcomes tested by the course / ECA by 4, [...]

S197 results were out yesterday for the 2007B presentation, along with a bunch of other science short courses, and I’m happy to say I got what I wanted:

What that screenshot doesn’t show is the OES score (because I keep such things to myself) – which seems to be an endangered species at the moment. [...]

Personally I prefer OpenOffice, but MS Office has its fans – the OneNote component in particular seems to be all the rage at the moment amongst students. The big drawback with MS Office, though, is the cost – the student price for Office 2007 Enterprise Edition is £89.99, while OneNote 2007 on its own [...]

Another post inspired by the folks over at OUSA 10-pointers, this time looking at what qualifications are worth. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s website lists the various National Vocational Qualification NVQ levels, alongside the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ) levels, to give a fairly good idea of where the OU’s certificates and diplomas [...]

A poster over in the OUSA 10 Pointers conference.. er, forum (grr to changing the “official” terminology for no good reason) was lamenting the end of A171 (Start Writing for the Internet) – it’s in the middle of its final presentation at the moment, and they were sorry they’d missed it.
I did A171, and I [...]

Technically, this course stared back on 12 May, but thanks to the M255 exam looming on the horizon I only got around to opening the course materials yesterday.  Not bad self-control, if I do say so myself.  Course description’s here, and you can read more about my first impressions below the cut.

The last exam I sat was way back in 1989, when I did my GCSEs.  On Tuesday, I had the joys of sitting the M255 exam – and after checking out the past & specimen papers for the course, I wasn’t hugely confident.  Having to wade through Belfast’s flash floods to get to the exam [...]

Welcome to OpenMusings, where I’ll be taking occasional looks at the Open University courses I’ve been working through – and being one of those people who can’t seem to resist clicking the “Register” button, there are a lot of ‘em.  What makes me qualified to comment?  Well, nothing, to be honest – I’m just your [...]