Study anything any when (Open University in general)

Member Name: Vixstar

Product:	Open University in general
Date:	20/10/09 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wide variety of subjects and qualifications; cheaper than uni

Disadvantages: Limited student social life; requires self motivation

Having recently completed a language course with the Open University I thought I'd share my experience of the OU with you. I'm going to try to keep the course information minimal however some of my info is specific to language courses and I will try to make this obvious.

Having to spend my working week away from home I decided that I wanted to do something in the evenings to keep myself busy and hopefully meet some new people. I had a night class in mind however after some persuasion from my Godmother who has recently gained an OU degree I found myself requesting an OU prospectus...

*The Prospectus*

As the OU covers such a wide range of subjects, like any university, there is not simply one prospectus to cover every course. The courses are broken into (fairly) logical groups and you can order a free prospectus covering the area you are interested in. If you don't need a hard copy you can find all the relevant info on the OU website (open.ac.uk) where courses are also linked to other similar courses. This has the advantage of allowing you to widen your horizons but can also get a bit overwhelming and if you're not careful you may find yourself choosing to do something which will not suit you. And on the tune of finding things to suit you they do apparently have regional open evenings where you can talk to an advisor about your choice of course, I didn't use one for the course I have just completed as I couldn't find a date and location to suit me but I will do for a future course I am planning as I prefer face to face discussions and the web information isn't a clear enough guide as to whether the current qualifications I hold are enough for me to be able to cope with the course. And so onto...

*Courses*

The courses avaiaable are set at different levels, this means that they last for varying amounts of time and are worth different amount of credits towards either your final degree, diploma or certificate - if you have decided that you want to work to wards a formal qualification. The prospectus gives plenty of information as to what level you course is at and what qualification it can be put towards. If you have never done self motivated learning before you are recommended to do either a short 12 week course or a level 1 course to get the hang of the amount of work you have to put in, although bear in mind that some level 1 courses can last the whole year. I'm glad I went for a level 1 course first as I've found out how much effort is involved and feel I've now got a good grasp of how language courses run and what I should do to improve my experience.

As I have mentioned you can link together courses to get nationally recognised qualifications from certificates through to degrees. Some of the qualifications require you to choose from specific subjexct groups but for those who can't make their mind up there is also the Open degree in which you can choose a fairly wide mix of courses. With the language courses I found that the combinations were a little limited with the main degrees available being based on French, Spanish and German or a choice of two languages - I was hoping I'd be able to add a totally new language into the mix too like Greek or Welsh. The other slight issue was that from the courses and levels you had to choose from it appears you need either a good grounding in one of the modern languages or to be willing to spend an extra couple of years geeting the basics in both languages - in effect spending up to 9 years (assuming one course a year) rather than 7 studying.

I didn't have any problem registering for the course, although be careful with some of the language courses as there are someimes two modules running with similar course codes but with one having face to face tutorials and the other having online tutorials, depending on your preference mixing them up could be a problem.

*Cost and paying*

The cost of the courses also varies depending on length of time, resources you receive as part of the course and if there are any summer schools involved.

To give an idea of how it works my level one Spanish course (with 6 text books and CDs and no summer school) cost £430, the level two course with a summer school in Spain (excluding travel costs) costs £1045, other course costs come in somewhere between these two. This may seem a lot per course but when you consider tuition fees for conventional university degrees its pretty similar if not slightly cheaper.

It is obviously cheapest to pay these costs straight away but for those of us who don't have the cash available there is direct debit scheme alsthough there is a percentage added on for this.

Along with the cost of the cost you must remember the cost of any additional materials or recommended books. What I found with the Spanish (and was a little suprised about) was that the dictionary and grammer book reccommended for the initial module was not the same as the disctionary and grammar book recommended for later modules - it is worth checking this information before buying recommended books especially if you are planning on doing related modules as you could avoid the cost of upgrading.

*Studying*

The one thing any OU courses require is a degree of self motivation to learn and follow a timetable. I had great plans and found them a little bit difficult to follow, easy enough with a level one course but I realise I won't be able to get away with this on more advanced courses. A lot of the courses have a number of assessments throughout the course and tutorials based on chunks of the work - these do have a motivating effect! The website has information on how much time per week studying should be devoted to different courses depending on how many credits the course is worth (for my 30 credit level 1 course I believe it was recommended to devote about 15 hours a week to study). I found it difficult to find enough work to fill the recommended time (possible due to slight laziness) although I also know I wouldn't have had enough time to do two courses concurrently and work full time.

My course had monthly tutorials for a couple of hours each time. The tutorials are often held in colleges. There are a number of OU study centres round the country, though it may involve a fairly long trip to get to them. I assumed tha tutorials would take place on weekday evenings, but it turned out in my area they were on Saturday mornings - a bit awkward getting ito the city where they were held on the busiest day of the week!

With doing a language course I found the tutorials essential as this was the only time we got to practice speaking with our (native Spanish) tutor. It also provided an opportunity to interact and learn from the other students. With languages courses there is also an online forum called Lyceum where you can talk to OU students from round the country but I can't comment on how well this works as my internet connection is exceptionally poor.

The majority of courses have a form of end of course assessment - either a formal exam or an assignment similar to the through course assessments. With the language course we also had a face to face oral exam with our tutor but apparently this form of assessment is being finished - I find this a bit strange as I guess the alternative is recording a spoken piece and sending it in (several of the through course assessments involve this). I was a bit suprised by the lack of formal, timed exam - the only timing issue with the end of course assessment was making sure the assessment was submitted by post in time to arrive with the markers by the cut off date (the through course assessments also have a fairly tight deadline but they can be submitted via the internet so for those of us who are a little less organised...). Unfortunately it seems to take 3 months for the OU to mark the final assessments and return the final mark for the module which I am finding very frustrating, especially as my results aren't due until two days after registration closes for my next module.

*Student Life*

The one major down side of an OU course is that you don't get as much class interaction as you would with going to a night class every week, however I know of courses who have set up their own study groups so it all depends on who you are studying with. I am looking forward to summer schools as I will get to meet more people and hopefully behave a bit more like a conventional student during these.

The Open University has a student association which you automatically become a member of and as an OU student you are entitled to a student card (costing £10 last time I looked) so you can take advantage of both of these (something else I didn't do this year).

*Would I do it again?*

As you may have gathered from reading the rest of this review I am intending on carrying on studying with the OU. I have learnt a lot from this first module and realise I need to be more personally organised in order to get the most out of the course. I find some aspects of the course a little odd - such as the end of course assessments - but other bits like the ease of interaction with my tutor were good.

If you are considering studying something, are self motivated and have a good few hours spare a week then OU is definitely worth a look.

Summary: If you want to study it there's a good chance they have a course for it