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Student at the Open University
Open University
Milton Keynes

Open University

Hi,

I’m new to posting on this site.

I am thinking of studying with the OU. I wanted to know what type of communication the course involves? For example, telephone convos, online virtual classrooms, group discussions etc. I suffer from really bad social anxiety so I want to know exactly what to expect before I enrol.

Also, has anyone else studied with the OU? What was your experience like?
Hello,

My experience of the OU over the last three years is that you can get involved with other students directly as much or as little as you want. I am in my first year of level 2, so I can’t comment on the latter half of this or level 3, but that is definitely my experience so far.

You communicate with your tutor via email or telephone - the choice is up to you really. Some tutors will call at the start of a module to say hi and introduce themselves, others don’t. Depends on who you get.

As for interaction with other students. There are both online tutorials, where you ‘sit’ in an online ‘room’ and listen to a tutor present over a microphone whilst watching the slides. There are interactive elements to these but in my experience interacting is usually via typing. Some modules also offer face to face learning events to prepare for TMA’s or cover key topics. Both of these types of tutorials are optional.

Whether more interaction with students on my particular course is to come in future years I can’t comment. But this has been my experience so far.

Ben
Student at the Open University
Open University
Milton Keynes
I finished studying with the OU recently and studied with them for years. I used to have severe anxiety, I have moderate anxiety now.

Telephones, I've had many, many, many, many, many tutors and I've only ever had a telephone call with two of them, one who rang me as he was concerned (was anxiety related and how was I getting on), the other when something went wrong. Both a single time. Ever. So don't worry about telephones.

Face to face tutorials - barely exist any more, although this varies widely by subject. In 2018 there isn't very much in the way of face to face contact any more. In the past each 30 credit module used to have around 4-5 face to face tutorials in a city maybe 30 miles away. These were optional.

Online tutorials. Now it's all virtual, the latest version of online tutorials the OU uses uses something called adobe connect. Basically you sit in an online chat room, you can sit there silent and type responses in the chat box if you want. Sometimes there are as few as 2-3 other people, sometimes in large modules in module wide tutorials there can be 30-40 people. These are generally recorded, so you can watch them later. I always found it better to go to online tutorials as it forced you to watch them and was more motivating watching live than a recording later (which you felt guilty about).

Emails. Get emails at the start of the module then if you don't converse with tutors about TMA (tutor marked assignments) feedback you may only hear from a tutor by email 2-4 times in a 9 month course. I'm going to shock a lot I rarely bothered reading TMA feedback and so virtually never emailed my tutors. Other people seemed to have a very close relationship with their tutors. Many courses have 4 TMAs per module per 30 credits. Not all.

Tutors. Brilliant. I've studied at other institutions and I only ever met two 'bad' OU tutors. Often holding down multiple academic jobs, great teachers and human beings. The only downside was many were very optimistic people.

In recent years on parts of the course that require group activities, the OU's become obsessed with forums. However many people don't participate.

In terms of joining in with other students I don't have any friends I made at the OU. I have an acquaintance who wished me luck after I finished and another tutor and that was it. I never worked out how to get an open university email address which meant I couldn't join the OU facebook stuff.

In terms of anxiety I found the OU to be quite stressful as I found it very bureaucratic. I hate coursework and the OU is obsessed about it (although they have relaxed regulations the last 2-3 years). Every single module these days now has different rules on thresholds so for example to be entered on the exam one module had rules of score 30% or more in 7/10 TMAs or iCMAs. Others 40%. Others weird random rules they thought up. I did tend to do more modules simultaneously than other students, which might explain also the higher stress levels. One of the things I noticed the last two-three years is as the OU's had cuts and been changing, the formats of module websites seems to change for every module and is at time just a random splurge of noise. I noticed on my last few OU modules it wasn't just me that thought this and there seemed to be a lot of stress/questions by the sharper students about where is so and so on the website.

Exams, most non-level 1 modules have exams. If you're lucky and live in a big city it might be 3-4 miles away in the centre or at a venue or a football ground. You won't have these straight away and will be able to settle in.

What I would say is there are a lot of 'lurker' OU students that don't really have much to do with anyone else (this was a point made to me also at a consultation meeting I attended). The side the public see are the students who gush on about the OU like a religion and have supportive employers encouraging them on the course and it 'changed their life'. Nice people and I've met my fair share. For me the OU was a very lonely and bureaucratic experience and if I had the time I wouldn't do it again.
(edited 5 years ago)
I didn't study with the OU but I have just finished a online degree at another institution. From my experience, not many students engaged with each other (we used a discussion board) so it can feel quite isolated and a lonely experience. At times I felt stressed and didn't feel the lecturers were that supportive (but this may be different with the OU).

Having said that, the degree is enabling me to change careers and has taught me that I am more than I thought I was capable of. It's just that I have felt like I was doing this on my own, where I thought there would be more of a community for support and to engage with.
The OU do try to encourage the interaction and I think it's down to the individual. If you want to work with others then there will be people out there of a similar mind.

What did disappoint me on my last module though, the OU provide an environment for online discussions but a big chunk of the students ignored it and broke away to form their own Facebook group. Of course this just excluded the non Facebook users.
Original post by BreadLoser
What did disappoint me on my last module though, the OU provide an environment for online discussions but a big chunk of the students ignored it and broke away to form their own Facebook group. Of course this just excluded the non Facebook users.

It's like that on a lot of modules.

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