A Time of Magic

We all do, of course, but what if there’s just too much information?

One of the most significant differences I found when I started my current psychology course compared to the language courses that I’d been doing previously was that the much larger number of students involved meant that there was a correspondingly large increase in the information available online. So much in fact that selecting amongst it is almost at the point where it’s a significant problem.

In addition to the information put out by the university, there are notes from several different tutorial groups that were run in previous years, booklets summarizing the content of the course texts, study weekends, several blogs, student notes on the texts and even one set of answers for the assignments. That last is much less useful than you might think but is definitely very helpful to get a feel for what might be expected from the examiners.

I suspect that there are some people who are sinking in the sea of information out there. Even within our own group there are some people who are flipping between the two options in the first assignment thanks to the different ways that the requirements were put across in the two tutorials that have been run to date.

To my mind this is definitely a case of way too much information. It’s all useful to be sure and I’ve gone to tutorials run by two different tutors myself. Cost will dictate that most people will realistically only consider one of the four revision weekends that I’ve came across but the initial blogs on this course will only grow in numbers over the years adding to the confusion of future students I suspect.

The writing style and presentation of courses tends to reflect the subject matter of the courses involved.

Sounds obvious I suppose but unless you’ve done courses in a range of subject areas at the same level most people won’t really notice it.

Take the language courses I’ve been plugging away with over the last six years. In comparison to the laid back, typically Spanish style, the French courses seemed to reflect the more rigid approach to rules in France itself. The latest course is very much based in educational psychology so you find all the little reassuring sounds at the start when you’re generally in panic mode with any new course.

I’ve been looking at other universities over the last month or so and there you’ll find the untidy physist (almost a movie style mad scientist) and a few others that I probably shouldn’t comment on to avoid legal action

To my mind, one of the educational wonders of the world is the Open University which started life way back in the early 1970s with the aim of being a truly open university ie open to all, regardless of their prior educational achievements.

Way back then, the university operated by posting out course work books and text books and broadcasting lectures on BBC2 at crazy hours (in the pre-video recorder era I’m sure that the thought of attending 6am lectures thinned out the student numbers no end!). Since then they’ve moved on somewhat moving first to posting out the lectures for some courses on video tapes as the number of their courses overflowed the available airtime. Next came the DVDs with a fairly quick move onto DVD ROMs in recent years although funnily enough they only recently moved from cassette tapes to CDs for the language exams. Naturally, there’s also quite a substantial web based element and it’s quite possible to have online language tutorials (they actually work a lot better than the face to face ones).

However, I do wonder if all the technology is really necessary or even desireable. For example, in the last course I completed the course workbook had been replaced by a DVD ROM version. The DVD ROM brings videos right in the middle of the text which is definitely better than having to fire up a video but not being able to scribble notes right onto the text books. Oddly, to me, the course texts themselves are still books: I’d have preferred the work book to be the book and the texts to be on the DVD.