While I’m complaining about M253… When I can get to the course calendar, it helpfully makes the above suggestions on what you should be doing this week. All of which rely on someone bothering to post the Milestone 2 document to the course website, and of course that’s noticeably not there. Very [...]

After doing all the sums on what it would take to get a distinction on this one, it wasn’t to be:

There’s only so much studying you can do ahead of an exam, and there’s a certain sinking feeling you get when you revise a chunk of a block and then, come the exam, find that [...]

Whoops. A while has passed since the last update, so here’s a catch-up post.
- Wrote to my MP for the first time over the ELQ funding issue – which affects me, as it would knock short courses on the head, along with the idea I’ve been toying with of doing a BSc(Hons) Physical Science [...]

It occurs to me that anyone happening across this little corner of the ‘net who isn’t an OU student may be just a little confused by all the course codes and acronyms. If that’s you, wander over to the OU’s Courses & Qualifications page, and feed the code into the “Search Prospectus” box – [...]

Curious things you notice when reading exam feedback and such. In the case of M255, it appears that 2 people turned up for the exam, filled in their names & PIs to register that they were actually there, and then didn’t bother answering any questions (724 students “took” the exam, 722 gained a score [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]