Recent Posts
Foreign Perspectives
Return To Blog Listing
News and editorial on life from the south of France, a regular series on how to move here and some random musings too.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'open university'
The human biology course vs the cardiovascular diseases one
Whilst I’m getting into the swing of the human biology course, the cardiovascular diseases one is something else together. In principle, the human biology course as a level 2, 30 point course should clearly be harder than the cardiovascular dis...
Mulling over several competing options for 2010 courses
If it weren’t for the OU appearing to be about to drop all their science summer schools and consequently their named science degrees, the choices for 2010 would be very easy. First I’d be doing Biological Psychology in February and then i...
Overlapping courses for the first time
Thanks to the Child Development exam last week and the revision for it over the previous month, I only got around to signing up for Understanding cardiovascular diseases (SK121) a matter of days ago but this morning the website was already up for me....
The last few days of ED209
As usual, the last few days before an exam are a peculiar mix of panic cramming and looking forwards to the courses coming up. The ED209 exam is a little peculiar in that of the three questions on the paper, we’ve already been given one (it ain...
ED209 revision: theory of mind
Understanding minds is the shortest chapter in the Erica Cox notes at just over three pages vs six pages for most of the preceeding chapters which certainly sounds good in terms of being able to learn the content. Understanding a theory of mind is th...
ED209 revision: executive functions in childhood: development and disorder
Although executive functions in childhood: development and disorder is probably one of the more complex chapters, the notes on it are amongst the shortest. Executive function refers to those activities that are under conscious control rather than bei...
ED209 revision: the development of children’s understanding of grammar
The development of children’s understanding of grammar kicks off with a run-through of the definitions of some linguistic terminology before moving on to look at the development of spoken language, learning word endings and finally learning wor...
ED209 revision: first words
First words covers quite literally the first words as grammar is considered by a separate chapter. This might sound a little odd at first but considering that children only deal with isolated words to begin with and add the various bits of grammar ar...
ED209 revision: early category representation and concepts
Early category representation and concepts is a dreadful chapter as it’s all over the place but here goes… We tend to group items into categories which eventually leads to developing concepts. The question is: how do children do this? Usi...
Just “one more course” syndrome
The Open University has a very neat little facility on its student pages called Qualification Planner which is probably one of the most time wasting things that you can play with on their site. After being told about this facility some four years ago...
ED209 revision: national identities in children and young people
National identities in children and young people is quite a well structured chapter with relatively few theorists mentioned so, in principle, an easier one to revise than most. The chapter starts off with basic definitions of ingroup (ie your own nat...
ED209 revision: gender identity and the development of gender roles
Gender identity and the development of gender roles is a very structured chapter which has a number of quite disctinct sections each with their own crop of researchers. Concepts include gender itself which is generally considered as pertaining to the...
ED209 revision: temperament and development
Whilst early cognitive development seemed like a fairly well structured chapter, temperament and development seems all over the place at first glance and really only seems to get going in the second half which doesn’t suit my (relatively) organ...
ED209 revision: early cognitive development
Going by my revision plan I should have done sensation to perception first and indeed I have gone over those notes. However, the chapter from the book is an entirely different matter covering mainly the technicalities of the senses with heaps of new ...
Exam revision strategy for ED209
As those who’ve done this course will know, there is a LOT of course needing to be revised. So much in fact that, unless you’ve nothing else to do, there’s no way to do it all to the required level. However, there is the advantage t...
A good start for the new OU vice chancellor
I’m generally a message in a bottle kind of person as far as political activism goes rather than being that proactive with firing off letters to all and sundry as Wendy tends to do. However, I thought that I’d drop the new Open University...
More rejigging of the course plans
Now that I’m starting to look at the course forum for SK277 it turns out that there are yet more problems in attempting to cross the ELQ minefield. The problem is that, thanks to ELQ, several of the courses that make up the Diploma in Health Sc...
A note to the new OU vice chancellor
Unfortunately, Martin Bean has been appointed in what seem sure to be “interesting times” for the OU thanks to the ELQ funding fiasco that’s going to start hitting them particularly hard quite soon. Sadly, there seems to be little t...
The final TMA for ED209 so ’tis on to revision
Well, it’s almost out of the way. I’m currently sitting on 1850 words and 2000 is the target so I might run up that final 150 tomorrow. Or then again, I might just put it in as-is seeing as the mark I get on it won’t really affect t...
Finally making a serious start on TMA6 for ED209
I actually made a small start on this towards the end of July but August just pulls away from me every year so I’m only getting back to it now. As always the TMAs on this course seem harder than you’d expect for a level 2 course so there&...
Some thoughts on avoiding the ELQ fee sting
The more I read about the ELQ debate, the crazier it seems to become. At the moment, I’m actually exempt from what might be crazy increases in university fees as I live in Northern Ireland which is one of the minor exemptions in the grand scale...
I’ve finally signed up for the next couple of courses
After much debate I have finally gotten around to signing up for the Human Biology course and the related residential. The Human Biology course is something of a tangent to everything that I’ve done before. That seems likely to make it fall int...
Getting talked into overlapping courses
In my short term plans for OU courses the next one up is Human Biology which starts at the start of October and which overlaps my Child Development course by about three weeks. To reduce the work overlap what I’ve done is to buy the first book ...
Speeding up the degree by rescheduling the courses
Thanks to the “short” list of courses that I ran up last summer whilst thinking about what I do following the modern languages degree, I find that there’s quite a lot of scope for shortening the period to pick up the first two degrees from ...
Interesting but difficult courses
One of the problems that I have in choosing which courses to go for is that a number of those that I’d quite like to do fall into the category of “difficult” for one reason or another. In some cases that’s not so bad I can, for instan...
Isn’t Child Development (ED209) a “girly” course?
I raised this question during one of the recent tutorials and was instantly shot down! However, whilst it’s not a “girly” course in terms of difficulty (I’m finding it harder going than even level 3 French!), it is a “girly” cours...
The Open University as a constant in one’s life
Although many people are plugging away with various OU courses with a view, at least in principle, to eventually acquiring a degree in the fullness of time, the long drawn out nature of OU degrees tends to make the degree itself something of a fixtur...
So what’s this ELQ business and why’s it such a big deal for the Open University?
The first time I came across ELQ (Equivalent and Lower Qualifications) was a year or two back when it was mentioned in one of the rare rallying cry type emails that come out from the Open University. What’s it all about? Well, basically the gov...
Isn’t it typical: when you’re in a hurry to see your marks, they don’t arrive?
As usual I ended up putting my previous assignment in at the last minute. That’s not because I didn’t start on it reasonably early this time around but because I always find that there’s some last minute thing that I can do to impro...
An inveterate prospectus browser
One of the problems with the Open University is that up until a year ago they put out a prospectus giving about a paragraph on each of the courses which they run and you’re talking about hundreds of courses over dozens of different subject area...
