Open University course Y002A - Level 1 - 10 points
Living Arts - one of the "Openings" courses
Having done two 10-point courses I needed to rack up another 10 to make it a round 30, as degrees are achieved in multiples of 30. I didn't have a French course in 2002 so an Openings course seemed the ideal choice to keep me on the straight and narrow, and to give me more experience of academic study. This was the first time that the Openings courses had been awarding 10 points to students who completed and achieved the required standard in an additional assignment. It was not compulsory and one could have still completed the course (but no 10 points) without doing the extra work.
Y002 is in two modules: "Words" and "Sounds", and the materials come packed in a cute box and comprise: books, video and audio tapes, resources and assignment booklets, and a copy of the "The Arts Good Study Guide" which is a terrific learning aid for students.
I was blessed with a great tutor in Anne Morgellyn and had several enjoyable telephone tutorials with her. I also found the FirstClass conference handy - although I don't think the OU promotes conferencing as well as it could.
The first assignment was in the "Words" module and didn't worry me too much, but I was terrified of the "Sounds" one as it was based heavily on music. However, in the end I thoroughly enjoyed it - especially putting together the assignment of devising film plots to go with three very different pieces of music. The 3rd assignment was a review of the course and the newly acquired knowledge and what I felt I had learnt from it.
The fourth and final assignment was tricky. For each of my previous three assignments I had "very well achieved" in every learning outcome, but in this assignment I had to go back, reflect on what I had done, and improve on it. Fortunately we were given more words to do it in, but I still found it difficult.
I am, at the time of writing, awaiting my results.
18th November 2002
