OpenMusings

Trying to submit TMA01 for M253, and I’m being greeted by this wonderful caption. Again. Seems the OU’s new web platform is best described as “shaky”.

TMA01 for M253 is due on Monday, and my team is deep into finalising the team portions of the TMA. Or we would be, if the OU website were playing ball:

Due to a problem, we’re currently unable to display your course content.
Our technical staff have already have been notified, and will be fixing it as soon as possible.
We apologise for the inconvenience.

Grrr. And Aaargh. Apparently it’s not just the M253 website that’s affected, so that makes me feel a little better (TMA extensions all round, anyone?), but still… Time to thwack OU tech support with a clue-by-four…

S199 is done & dusted, and I have to say I’ve never been so happy to see the back of the course. Initially the problem was just information not sinking in – taking a break for a while (and deferring to the 2nd ECA date as a result) and starting over again solved that problem, but then technical issues with the Student Visualisation Interface app that the OU provide nearly scuppered the whole thing. With an issue that left me unable to complete the ECA, I spent 3 weeks trying to get a solution out of the OU Computing Helpdesk and the course advisers, and drew a blank (OUCH aren’t interested unless it’s an installation problem, and the advisers were a tad.. relaxed.. when it came to replying to the query). Even allowing for the problem running over Christmas, that’s not really ideal.

In the end, I solved the issue myself and the ECA is now away – but the prospect of being unable to complete an ECA, and therefore failing the course, through no fault of my own has left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen again.

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…