OpenMusings

I’ve been plugging away at S199 (Modelling the climate) over the past few weeks, and I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that this may be one of those courses that’s Just Not For Me™ – I’m finding the activities very hard going, and a lot of the information just isn’t sinking in right. With my scheduling pile-up fast approaching, I’m beginning to think I may have to defer to the 2nd ECA deadline at the end of January – which then knocks S186 (Volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis) off-course. Ack.

I’m not sure what the problem is – my mind’s much happier dealing with things scientific, and studying weather systems in Geography class at school didn’t give me any problems, so I wasn’t expecting this course to present any issues. Perhaps it’s the lack of motivation from knowing I’m not going to get a score out of it, perhaps it’s the little part of me that’s still a climate change sceptic – whatever it is, it’s hugely frustrating.

Come next week I’ll be into revision mode for T224 and things climate-related will be forgotten about until more important, degree-related matters are out of the way. Hopefully the brain-freeze isn’t a general thing…

Hmm. I sense an unfortunate coming-together of deadlines across three courses that means October / November is going to be hectic…

T224 Exam: 16th October
S199 ECA deadline: 31st October
M257 TMA01 deadline: 15th November

I think my one-month break is about to come back and bite me. The original plan had been to have S199 completed by the end of September – that would have given me 2 weeks to revise for the T224 exam, then into M257 with plenty of time to meet the TMA deadline.

Unfortunately, S199 is proving to be the trickiest 10-pointer I’ve done so far, and it looks like I won’t be finished with it by the end of the month. The revision time for T224 is non-negotiable, so I’ll have to finish S199 after the exam – which then leaves me very short on time to complete the first few M257 units & TMA01. Argh.

Should’ve started M257 when the books arrived, I guess…

S194 resuts were released today:

Happy enough with that, of course – although a dig into the performance profile revealed a few “just achieved” marks that I’m not so happy with. Far be it for me to query the OU’s infallible marking, mind you.

This was the first course I’ve done where I’ve received the Learning Outcome comments instead of a percentage score – I’ve grumbled about these before, and getting this result has just borne out the comments I made then about percentages being a motivational thing – getting this result just didn’t feel the same or mean the same to me. I did use my rough-and-ready formula to calculate a mark for myself, but I still know that’s not a “real” mark. Suddenly my motivation to do more SSCs has taken a dip.

Heads up for anyone who was as interested in this one as I am – the details page for the Certificate in Introductory Astronomy is now up. As it’s a collaborative scheme, it’s not listed in the main Courses section of the OU site, but instead has its own site:
Certificate in Introductory Astronomy
Usual rules for collaborative schemes apparently apply, and you can find ‘em here:
Collaborative Schemes

Go for it – you know you want to..

Okay, my T224/TMA04 mark is now in, and I’ve redone my substitution sums – as I suspected, if I’d scored 85% on the final TMA, I’d have been in the position where I would have needed to score 85% – not a mark higher or lower – to get a distinction for this course, thanks to the way substitution works on courses where the TMAs aren’t all weighted equally. With the score I got on the final TMA, there’s the equally strange situation where any score over 85% on the exam will guarantee me a distinction, except 90% or 91%. Confused? Read on below the cut and I’ll try to explain…

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With T224 coming to an end, I’ve been playing around with Marx and the OU’s own Assessment Calculator to work out what I’ll potentially need to get a distinction on the course. With T224 not counting towards the honours calculation on the degree I’m working towards, the pass grade isn’t really important as such, but there’s a level of personal pride there that makes me want to the top grade. Start as you mean to go on, and all that.

I’m currently waiting on my mark from TMA04, but depending what I get there, the substitution system is throwing up some unusual vagaries that seem to flow from the different weightings on T224′s assignments (TMA01 15%, TMA02 30%, TMA03 30%, TMA04 25%) that could leave me needing a very specific mark on the exam (85%) to guarantee a distinction – any lower and the OES is below the threshold, any higher and the substitution score switches to a TMA with a different weighting and leaves me short on the OCAS. It’s all theoretical at the moment, but I’ll be looking into this a bit more once I have my TMA04 score, as I’d consider the possibility of getting a Distinction for scoring 85% in the exam, but a Pass 2 for scoring 86%, to be something of a glitch in the system…

After a few weeks away from the books, I’m back and raring to go – or I would be, if the S199 software from climateprediction.net would please play ball. I’m currently running Vista on my Mac using the very nifty Parallels Desktop virtualisation tool – an easy way to get the best of both worlds, as it lets you run Windows (or any other OS for Intel machines) as an application under OS X. Neat. Sadly, the climateprediction.net software doesn’t like Vista – I can see from the S199 boards on First Class that a few other people have been having the same problem as I’ve been getting, but since the OU doesn’t support Vista there’s not much help being given there.

You’re probably thinking the obvious solution is to just ask on the cpdn forums, and yes, they do have an apparently very helpful support forum – but you need to be a registered user before you can post queries. The only way you can register is through the cpdn application – which won’t work under Vista, so you can’t register to post your query. A wonderfully vicious circle. ::headdesk::

Fortunately, I have copy of an older version of Windows on hand, and Parallels lets you install as many ‘virtual’ OSs as you like – I just could have done without the bother of spending the time installing Windows 2000. Frustrated? Oh yes.

UPDATE: So after spending the time to get Win2K up & running, I found it still wasn’t working, which makes me suspect a problem at cpdn’s end. Same result on a native Windows box, too, so that rules out Parallels being the cause. Of course, since the app won’t register, I still can’t post to their support forums to ask about it. Ah well – wait a few days & try again…

UPDATE 2: And lo, it was a fault at cpdn’s end. Tried again last night and the client connected & registered with no problems. Here endeth a few days’ frustration…