M206 (Shirl's version)

Womble has described the course comprehensively so I’m afraid you are stuck with my usual rambles on my own personal experiences.

As Womble said up to the first TMA the course went very smoothly. In fact I would have been tempted to think along the lines of “this is a doddle” only fortunately we tadpoles had been warned not to get complacent by the fully fledged phrogs who had done the course previously. The nickname of phrogs comes from the work in Learning Works since this involves programming frogs (and toads) to perform various actions. It was a proud day when I taught my frogs to barn dance.

The rest of the course was a whole different ballgame. I was working full time by this time and found there was no way I could really concentrate after 9pm so I tried to get most of my work done in the early evening. As assignments loomed this was not always possible and I’d still be tearing my hair out around 11pm some nights, but I enjoyed the challenge of M206.

After studying each evening or if I was stuck on a particular subject I would pop into the msn M206 student community chat room. If I had not had the support of my peers in the community, my experience of M206 would have been a lot more harrowing.

The OU attitude to discussion of course work tends to be ambivalent. On one hand they claim to encourage self-help groups among students. However the conferences were full of students getting their knuckles rapped for overstepping the invisible, and seemingly mobile, line when trying to help out others. As a result it ended up that students were afraid to suggest anything to help others in the official First Class conferences. None of us wanted to be told the answer to a problem but a nudge in the right direction could save days of hair pulling frustration. M206 students provided a more relaxed atmosphere where we could discuss problems just as we would have if we had been attending a brick university.

For the first time I was able to attend tutorials regularly and although I could no doubt have managed without them again it was nice to have the extra support. My tutor was tutoring OU work for the first time but was a Maths teacher in his day job so had a good background knowledge.

After studying for 8 months it was time for the dreaded exam. Official revision sessions concentrated on an example exam paper. I wouldn’t say I was confident when I entered the exam room but I wasn’t too worried. Needless to say I should have been.

Problems started before I even got there. We had left the house in plenty of time to get down the church hall in Ayr where I was sitting the exam. But by the time we had sat in a traffic jam on the A77 for an hour I only just made it.

Then I looked at the exam paper! None of the revision sessions had prepared me for that. Throughout the exam I could hear my sighs of exasperation and panic echoing through the room from all the other students. It’s just as well the first thing you have to do is fill in your name on the books because by the end of the 4 hours I couldn’t remember it.

After wards we left the exam room, stood outside in stunned silence before heading straight for the nearest pub.
I didn’t do too badly despite all that. I got 77% in the exam, which got me a pass 2. However I was happy that the next year’s course T209 had no exam.