At the moment OU courses start on specific dates once or twice a year. If you just miss a course start date you may have to wait up to a year to study it.
I think it would be easier if I could start to take a course whenever I wanted to...
If everyone starts at different times they lose the possibility of interacting and building understanding together - whether via Moodle, FirstClass, email or wikis.
The OU does offer its CPD courses on a start anytime basis, they are shortish in duration ( 30 learning hours) and intended to be quick updates or skills/knowledge gap filling that might be identified in say a CDSA type review. It's nice to think that it's the interaction with others through tutorials etc that keeps students going through our conventional courses but maybe its the assessment timetable that is the big motivational driver, Would be interesting to try anytime start but with timetabled assessment. Sign up, select the time you want to complete in say 3 months, six months whatever and the system then contructs your personalised deadline schedule holds you to with enforced cut off dates etc I suppose the system could also match you up with other recent starters as study buddies if the social contact were important to you
Moodle can't do it, I've asked.
Problem with all these is the who dunnit factor for E+A with flexible start and finish dates would we need an corresponding infinity of exams?
perhaps not offer completely flexible dates, but we should certainly offer more than just once-a-year start dates for as many courses as possible. An alternative (as I *think* the OU Netherlands operates) is to start a course once 'enough' people have registered. So you could say that a course will have a guaranteed start within (e.g.) 3 months, but if (e.g.) 200 people register before then it will start straight away, then another 3 month registration period opens. Maybe not an ideal solution (and might not suit all courses, especially course with very low student numbers), but at least it offers more flexibility for students. It keeps the possibilities open for collaborative work and not as much work for E+A as totally flexible start dates. Might (possibly) help to spread the workload for ALs and E+A? This alternative would've certainly suited me in the past where I've wanted to study a course, but found it doesn't start for another 7-8-9 months! Alex
I know several people who recruit students onto OU courses under the YASS scheme, and my experience is that a certain proportion of those students actually study e.g. short courses "full time" over a short period, rather than over the 10 weeks the courses nominally run for.
As for peer support - this can take different forms: 1) active conversations with other students; 2) tracking other students conversations as a lurker; 3) using course conferences/forums as a searchable FAQ database,
For students who prefer mode 3 in the list above, then access to archived conferences could be valuable?
Anytime starts does seem to divide the distance learning community. I have colleagues in Canada who won't hear of anything else. For my money an approach which allows students to start doing something as soon as they wish and gets going properly as soon as there is a cohort has the best of most worlds.
Revise
Vote Up
Vote Down
Post New Comment
Close