I have been doing free online courses through interest more than anything else and now I’m thinking about Doing a degree. Anyone done a degree with them? Any advice to share?

Did Some Post Grad stuff with them a few years ago. Excellent and they have very high standards. I recruited a BA a few years back who I recall had done his Degree with them whilst working. I took him on and he was excellent. If you can do a degree with them whilst working you are good.

I’ve done a few courses with them (BSc and MSc Maths), excellent material, really well structured and designed for self study. It was amazing value for money, I was paying about £230 a course, but that was nearly 20 years ago, so no idea what it costs now.

A friend did one and loved it, allowed a lot of flexibility and less getting stuck with modules that you weren’t interested in.

I did my MBA with them – I’d recommend them.
BUT remember that there are many more institutions doing distance learning/online courses now.

Currently doing a Masters level qualification with them. really good and well structured, excellent support. Biggest challenge is finding the time each week to keep up with the work.

It depends on how much practical work your subject requires: At the beginning of this term, I went and helped out at a demo day at my Uni, where potential students were shown around the labs and given an intro lecture, some of whom were from the OU and considering swapping.

I’d only completed my first year and found I was far more advanced in the practical side of the things, compared to a few of the people who had been studying at the OU for longer.

Edit: I should also add that a few of them said many of the practical activities, such as field trips have been cut and the students were left to organise their own. Of course, this may have no bearing on your subject, so please ignore if that’s the case.

If your subject doesn’t have a large practical element, then I’ve heard they are as good as anywhere. However, my view is there is no substitute for face-to-face contact with lecturers and other students.

My Uni, Birkbeck, also do distance learning, so it may be worth looking there as well.

Nothing to do with OU, but hopefully useful without being patronising.

I’m in my third year studying with Goldsmiths and it’s not well structured, supported or thought through. It is cheap though.

If you’re embarking on a full degree, a big investment of time and money, do make sure it’s well supported for distance learning.

I was doing a maths degree with them a few years back but found my tutor support very lacking. I sacked it in the end when my littlest was born as a house with a baby and a two year old wasn’t a good learning environment. I looked into starting it again recently but it was too expensive

What I know about the OU.

It doesn’t have many classrooms and those it does have are very small.

It had some moon rock whilst I was there.

The canteen isn’t very organised.

The sat nav takes you to a big pond which the OU is on the other side of.

Currently studying for an OU degree. The material and support is excellent and there are regular tutorials, both on line and face to face. On my current module the face to face is about once a month but are 1 – 2 hours travel away. That’s not bad because 2 of the sites are next to train stations so I take the train and use the travel time as study time.
It takes discipline and you need to manage your time. You will be given an estimate of how many hours per week you’ll probably need to dedicate to study and where you should be calendar. At first this seems generous but use the time to get ahead of where you need to be because it’ll get harder, quickly, and it’s very easy to fall behind and get dispirited. The fact is there will be times when you just can’t be ar5ed and you do need to take that time off. But it costs lost time so build the time up while you can.
I did two modules at once at the beginning of this year. Not going to do that again. Also, looking back at this year, I did very little of the things I like doing in summer – kayaking, hill walking, bike riding, so may well skip a course this summer and do something more fun than sitting in a library staring at a computer screen.
I do take study weekends away from time to time – change of scenery helps.
Cost – a degree is 360 points, 120 at each of levels 1,2 and 3. A 30 point course will be around £500 and a 60 point around £800. Credit is cheap and easy to arrange via OU.

I did a BSc (hons) with them and graduated about 6 years ago. Since then they have had a huge change around with their degree courses due to cuts in funding meaning lots of the good course features, summer schools and modules have changed/stopped. Fee’s have increased too by the looks of it.

The good bits are that you choose when to study and work by yourself from home or wherever.

The bad bits are that sometimes you can have a tutor that just doesnt reply to your emails when you have questions. Studying a degree on your own can get quite tough. It takes on average 6 years to complete a degree unless you have a lot of free time and can double up on courses (120 points per year instead of 60 – not recommended unless you really do have a lot of time available).

Course materials are great. Work books well written and exams/course work interesting. Can be stressful when you have 2 30 point courses running at the same time with 2 TMA’s due in at similar times.

Ask yourself whether you are studying for fun or to change your career and if its for a career change then do your research into this first. I didnt and by the time I graduated found very little in the way of jobs that either paid well, didnt require moving to another country or interested me enough.

Best of luck.

Just reading through what Chubby said above and can totally relate to it – the lack of social life can be pretty tough.

Keep it up Chubby, you’ll get there soon.

Not studied with them myself

But

My daughter has just started with the OU at 16. Looking good so far

My sister did 1 OU Unit in CAD and really transformed her career (she was already a graduate engineer)

My niece do the pgce to become a teacher and that worked out well for her

My sister in law did an environmental science degree. Lots of work but it went well. Lost out on a higher grade when she had to help care for a family member

My dad did an OU degree during retirement. Again lots of work but he enjoyed it and got quite creative with module choices. He already had a degree and MBA, it was just for fun

But we are quite biased as a family. Dad was 1 of the first 8 employees of the OU. He had a whole career their and ended up as Secretary, had a building named after him etc. So I’m a bit biased

The loss of summer schools is sad. Fees are now mental high but you can get a student loan to cover them

I completed my degree with the OU about 15 years ago, so things may have changed; but, I found it excellent. I was working full-time and had 2 children whilst doing it. You need dedication and a lot of stamina, I found motivating myself in years 5 & 6 tough. However, the resources were excellent (for maths at least). I didn’t really need the tutorials, but it was good to meet up with other students, as you could feel quite isolated otherwise.

Some good experiences here, however Mrs MF did her degree in Youth Justice with the OU. Really bad experience, little tutor support and an erratic marking system (she was getting mid 90% in her TMA but in her EMA was only reaching 70%)
Expensive too for the support you receive.

Keep it up Chubby, you’ll get there soon.

Funnily, PC was only on to work through some exercises – off to the pub now to talk about anything apart from maths and particle physics

Full disclosure: I work at the OU. It’s a wonderful place 🙂 Quite honestly we all have massive respect for our students and the commitment it takes to graduate. Our research suggests employers highly value OU graduates because they work so hard, usually balancing other commitments at the same time, to get their degree.

Anything I can do to help, OP, email in profile. Alternatively: http://www.open.ac.uk/contact and we’ll be very happy to answer your questions.

A couple of points worth thinking about re the cost:
Loans are available and you don’t have to start paying the money off until you’re above a certain earning threshold.
Levels of financial support available are different across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

I’m on my final unit after, I think about 6 years. My experience has been mostly good. I’ve been doing English Language and Literature. The materials are good, the structure works. Doing the assignments is hard work when working full time and in a job which is a headf**k from time to time and doesn’t leave much headspace available for study. You can feel you’re left alone a bit with the essays if you don’t take up the opportunities available in the forums, in e-mailing your tutor and joining the appropriate facebook group. Attending the tutorials is a pain in the wotsits sometimes depending where you are and what day they are on, but are really helpful for assignment pointers.

This year for the first time some of my tutorials are going to be web based which I’m looking forward to, although I did enjoy trekking into the big city and getting some shopping time in sometimes at weekends.

The cost goes up each year, as you move onto the heftier units, that can come as a bit of a shock. The course structure for this one gave me some units which I didn’t get the relevance of but had to suck it up anyway, even though I had zero interest in them. Materials history for example seemed a complete red herring but compulsory for my subject. An Open Degree lets you play around a bit more with finding things you enjoy doing.

The way the units scores go towards a degree class is hard too. I’ve been sauntering along with a borderline 2:1 / first score up until last year when one final assignment in a level 3 unit meant that a first is completely statistically impossible, and I’m going to have to turn in some consistent big scores this year to get the 2:1. I was totally gutted by this, so worth being aware that the scoring is very skewed. Still, four more assignments to go and I’m through!

[video]https://youtu.be/ZP6B1FjvGi4[/video]

Well.

I’m on here procrastinating, rather than making further progress on my OU MSc dissertation!

It’s cost me money (only 50% funded by employer), wiped out my social life (or the remnants thereof as I’ve two kids under 4) and I still don’t regret it for a second.

From a professional point of view it’s been really useful and all that good stuff you hear about regarding the skills you learn or improve en route to your qualification (time management, critical analysis etc. etc.) are absolutely true.

Obviously I’m biased, but bear in mind that I’m at a particularly rubbish point of my research at the minute and I still think it’s been a good decision.

Back to it then…

Twitter campaign to support part-time education