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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 22:11 - 10 May 2023    Post subject: Open University Courses Reply with quote
I've spent a fair bit of my spare time studying psychology but in light of my mother moving away from Cornwall to my area it's become apparent my skillset is severely lacking Sad I'm therefore giving serious consideration to something like a OU course to both formalise the direction I'm already heading and hopefully learn something too Smile

Anyone here gone through a OU course or could suggest a solid alternative?

p.s. I've already done various free online courses. "We'll email your diploma but why not pay for a framed version for the low, low fee of..." Rolling Eyes
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Fat Angry Scotsman
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PostPosted: 09:42 - 11 May 2023    Post subject: Re: Open University Courses Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
I've spent a fair bit of my spare time studying psychology but in light of my mother moving away from Cornwall to my area it's become apparent my skillset is severely lacking Sad I'm therefore giving serious consideration to something like a OU course to both formalise the direction I'm already heading and hopefully learn something too Smile

Anyone here gone through a OU course or could suggest a solid alternative?

p.s. I've already done various free online courses. "We'll email your diploma but why not pay for a framed version for the low, low fee of..." Rolling Eyes


I once toyed with the idea of getting and MBA through OU but the fees are just as high as if I did off-campus learning courses with a brick and mortar university. As such, when I do an MBA it will be from the University of Glasgow and not the Open University.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 10:14 - 11 May 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Good point, I'll see what local colleges offer with regards to distance and part time learning.
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Fat Angry Scotsman
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PostPosted: 10:36 - 11 May 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
Good point, I'll see what local colleges offer with regards to distance and part time learning.


COVID pretty much made Universities move to online delivery of lectures, etc. The one I send our apprentices to also records lectures so they can be re-watched at any time by the students. Now that COVID is over, they have the choice of attending the actual class or watching it online. The only thing they NEED to go in for is laboratory work and exams.

You might find you will be pleasantly surprised at the flexibility of your local institutions.

What level are you looking to achieve? Remember there is financial assistance for various levels and you might even find a local initiative to you that will get you on a course like an HNC or HND for free:

https://www.postgraduatesearch.com/funding
https://www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/
https://www.family-action.org.uk/what-we-do/grants/educational-grants/
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Islander
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PostPosted: 11:09 - 11 May 2023    Post subject: Re: Open University Courses Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
I've spent a fair bit of my spare time studying psychology but in light of my mother moving away from Cornwall to my area it's become apparent my skillset is severely lacking Sad I'm therefore giving serious consideration to something like a OU course to both formalise the direction I'm already heading and hopefully learn something too Smile

Anyone here gone through a OU course or could suggest a solid alternative?

p.s. I've already done various free online courses. "We'll email your diploma but why not pay for a framed version for the low, low fee of..." Rolling Eyes


I did a degree course with them a while back although living in Scotland IIRC my fees were lower than those in Englandshire. They have a credit account for students (Open University Student Budget Account or OUSBA) so that you can spread the cost over the study period. The materials you receive are high quality and they'll send you equipment on loan if the course demands it and then arrange collection afterwards.

You get unlimited access to all of the usual academic research libraries and databases of course...

You learn in modules and are assigned a tutor although they're there as a fallback and to provide advice rather than solid tutorials. You're expected to find the time to study and put the effort in. Your coursework is under continual assessment and you will be expected to take and submit either tutor marked assignments (TMA) or interactive computer marked assignments (iCMA) or a mix of both. There's usually an end of year exam and that's held at a local facility and independently invigilated.

There's an online support network and each course has it's own allocated area where you can interact with other students.

This was a while back so some of this may have changed slightly (I took CMAs rather than iCMAs that were completed with a graphite pencil on an old fashioned answer sheet - block out the appropriate area from a choice of 5 for each question). I'd imagine the iCMAs are similar to the type of thing you get for Cisco or Microsoft course assessments.

On the whole my experience was good and I'd recommend them as an approach to learning something formally.
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A100man
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PostPosted: 15:22 - 12 May 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Fat Angry Scotsman wrote:

COVID pretty much made Universities move to online delivery of lectures, etc. The one I send our apprentices to also records lectures so they can be re-watched at any time by the students. Now that COVID is over, they have the choice of attending the actual class or watching it online. The only thing they NEED to go in for is laboratory work and exams.

You might find you will be pleasantly surprised at the flexibility of your local institutions.

What level are you looking to achieve? Remember there is financial assistance for various levels and you might even find a local initiative to you that will get you on a course like an HNC or HND for free:


Probably not worth bothering with Edinburgh though..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65565031
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 19:51 - 16 May 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
I've had a brief look at some of the other distance learning degrees and they don't seem quite as well supported as OU.

I've also mentioned it to my boss: I could do it as a conventional 3 year course partly in work time or I'll do it in my own time over 6 years. Obviously I've sold the psychology skill set as being valuable to the company but that's not even a fib: UI design is all about perceptual manipulation Smile That and my last corporate contract impressed on me how some people have no concept of software being used by actual users Laughing

Anyhoo, I'll see if he bites. A 3 or 4 year course schedule might mean I could go to a real bricks & mortar uni although I'm not sure that's worth the money.
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Fat Angry Scotsman
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PostPosted: 15:11 - 17 May 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
Anyhoo, I'll see if he bites. A 3 or 4 year course schedule might mean I could go to a real bricks & mortar uni although I'm not sure that's worth the money.


It depends, I only did my PhD because it adds legitimacy to the papers, articles, etc that I write. I guess it comes back to psychology that people will naturally believe an article by Dr. XYZ over an article by Mr. ABC even if both of them are equally knowledgeable.

The only reason I am doing my MBA (some time in the future) is my role has naturally evolved from being very technically intense to a commercially driven one and it makes sense to have an academic underpinning it that side of things now. It wasn't that many years ago that my job was 90% drawings and calculations and now it's probably 90% talking to people about the drawings and calculations my team will make for them and going to fancy do's to press palms in the City.

So if it's going to actually help you in your career, I don't see how it's not worth the money.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 16:08 - 17 May 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Fat Angry Scotsman wrote:
So if it's going to actually help you in your career, I don't see how it's not worth the money.


Well I'm coming from it primarily from a point of "learn something useful" and (rightly or wrongly) I don't see computer programming being a life-long bet, sort of the reverse of "learn to code" Smile

Bricks & mortar versus distance learning would most likely achieve a better outcome but at the cost of ~10 bags more Shocked The prestige of a particular uni name I'm not personally interested in but I suppose should be a minor factor.
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duhawkz
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PostPosted: 17:08 - 21 Jun 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:

Bricks & mortar versus distance learning would most likely achieve a better outcome but at the cost of ~10 bags more Shocked The prestige of a particular uni name I'm not personally interested in but I suppose should be a minor factor.


I started doing a comp sci degree with the OU, when I initially enrolled the frees were much lower then attending a bricks and morter uni.

The government the removed the tution fee cap and the OU put their prices up inline with attending a bricks and mortar uni.

I also found some of the courses sadly lacking in content and quality

The other thing I didn't bank on was how draining it is coming home from work and having to study, particularly if you've had shit day at work and even more so if your not particularly interested in module.

I tried to do bits while commuting, but its not that easy to concentrate on a packed train when everyone is jabbering away.
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Lord Percy
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PostPosted: 08:30 - 22 Jun 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:

I don't see computer programming being a life-long bet, sort of the reverse of "learn to code" Smile


As of now there are companies dying to recruit devs to work on leviathan 20-year-old systems that nobody wants to work on any more.

20 years from now I suspect it will be the same, with the new stuff from today ending up as the legacy tech.

Even if AI takes away some parts of the work (I don't even think that will happen), there is still several generations of outdated tech ahead of us that will require someone to continue working on.

'Learn to code' is in the same ballpark as 'learn a trade'. Systems and standards change but I don't think it's ever going to go away now, as long as you keep your skills current.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 11:24 - 22 Jun 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Fair point. I see this more as an "allied trade" than a new direction, another string to my bow and all that.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 21:23 - 07 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
The OU website's opened up, I've worked through half the first week's materials and the course doesn't officially start till the 30th Smile And you'll be glad to hear I now have another forum to plague Laughing
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Fat Angry Scotsman
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PostPosted: 09:41 - 08 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Good luck on your course mate
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Islander
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PostPosted: 10:06 - 08 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
The OU website's opened up, I've worked through half the first week's materials and the course doesn't officially start till the 30th Smile And you'll be glad to hear I now have another forum to plague Laughing


RIP OU forum... Laughing

Enjoy the course and the best of luck. Thumbs Up
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Ste
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PostPosted: 13:02 - 08 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
I now have another forum

nobcat.jog needs to know the URL.
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A100man
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PostPosted: 14:32 - 08 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
The OU website's opened up, I've worked through half the first week's materials and the course doesn't officially start till the 30th Smile And you'll be glad to hear I now have another forum to plague Laughing


..no wonder the weeding never gets done
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 19:59 - 08 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
I have a rotovator, minimum effort Wink
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 13:11 - 21 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
To no one's surprise the women outnumber the men on my course by a factor of 10:1. Mostly bored housewives obsessed with Criminal Psychology it seems.
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struan80
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PostPosted: 14:39 - 21 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Enjoy the course mate. I started a maths and Physics degree but only lasted 6 months doing it as family, work and lifestyle meant I was starting to really stress about not doing enough work. I packed in. Nowadays I'm too lazy and old to be bothered unless they do a degree in motorcycle philosophy.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 00:06 - 24 Sep 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
New discovery: women play computer games! I know, you're shocked, right? And the games they like are the Final Fantasy series. The games channel of the course Discord has blown up with FF this, FF that Shocked
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megaross
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PostPosted: 09:39 - 16 Oct 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Going back 10+ years I was doing my mba part time before the government made me redundant.

I thought the course content was decent enough but that I wasn't learning anything I couldn't teach myself. You need to be strict and set aside study time is what I'd say.

Roll forward 10 years I'm now a software developer, just sort of fell into it, no qualifications. Work that out eh, the main skill is self teaching and winding up project managers
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