An unofficial OU blog detailing a return to study with the Open University, studying for a BA(Hons) Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Completed the course 30th May 2017 - having studied 'DD101 Introducing the Social Sciences', 'A222 Exploring Philosophy', 'DD203 Power, dissent, equality: understanding contemporary politics', 'DD209 Running the Economy', 'DD309 Doing economics: people, markets and policy' and 'DD306 Living Political Ideas'.
There has obviously been a downward shifting of grade boundaries, because I somehow scraped a Pass1.
The overall result from 385 students was,
A
B
C
D
E/F/G
No. of Students
15
116
161
76
17
Percentage
4%
30%
42%
20%
4%
So, if only 4% got an overall 'A' in the exam the awards panel can move grade boundaries to meet whatever 'bell curve' of passes they aim for. It also means that the exam and marking must have been fairly rigorous given the results above.
I did the two most popular questions and also the least popular,
Q1 = 225
Q3 = 276
Q9 = 39
My tutor suggested Q9 was the least answered historically and so if you attempted that at least the marker would be reading something different, and you may benefit from being slightly different from the norm. This may have been the case as Q9 was my best result.
If the OU website is correct and "Your module result should be available by Friday 2 August 2013." then we have three weeks to go until we get our result.
However, there is some uncertainty with the words "should" and "by", does this mean 'maybe' and 'before'....... why can't then be more accurate with their language.
Well, the DD203 politics exam went pretty much as well as I could have hoped for.
Question 3 : Politics and Power in the UK
The question was some thing pretty close to "Is the power of the UK Prime Minister unlimited". Pretty much what I had hoped for, and indeed revised for. It wasn't 100 miles away from the TMA for this subject, change a couple of words and twist the question and it is pretty close.
Unlike the Philosophy exam last year, I made a point of spending 10 minutes actually planning and setting out the question and I have to say it really helped. I wrote pretty much for the rest of the 50 minutes available for this question and it seemed to flow and make sense. If I knew about it (with regard to the PM's powers, the UK constitution, systems of power, devolution and the EU) then they know I knew about it, 'cos it all got written down. Question 9 : Evidence and Argument
Not the question I was looking for, as it was something like "Studying politics is all about evidence, not argument and opinion, discuss". So had to come at this through 'studying politics' angle, not ideal but I managed to get about 4 different points across about evidence being evaluated or only available through opinion. Managed to write for about 40 mins or so (after a 10 minute plan) and had covered everything and really had nothing else to add.
The last question was a bit of a lottery. I had wanted to do Question 2 about comparative politics, but the two options of what to compare did not suit me. The options were a bit tricky and there was a real problem that you could drift off track and answer a different question - so I plumped for the obvious banker..... wonder if this is risky. Question 1 : What is Politics ?
The question was something like, "Politics is not just done by politicians, it is also done by people, is this correct ?". Of course it is correct.
Worked in Woomera- felt compelled to do this, local HS2 campaign, mother-in-laws constant complaints against local supermarket for not stocking local produce, decisions to obey the law or not, people withholding tax or anti-poll tax riots as protest, people writing letters to local council regarding school places or planning permission.
Time was running out and this was not as content rich an answer as I would have liked, however after some Lucazade and chocolate I had a sugar high and possibly became slightly delirious as my conclusion started with something like "politics is like love in that it is all around" although I may not have properly referenced The Troggs or Wet Wet Wet, and continued that "possibly a more interesting question than do people engage in politics would be can people escape engaging in politics - I may have been a bit bored by then. Anyway finished with enough time to re-read two of the essays, so must have got the timing about right.
The rest of the Theme questions looked a bit difficult, although I could probably have had a stab at Power and Structures if necessary, but I'm glad it didn't come to that. I didn't even read the other questions from Part A, so I've no idea if Q4 & Q5 were good or not.
So, I guess that is about that, well until the beginning of August when the results should be through. I can look forward to some free evenings and no guilt-trips for not studying, so what to do until then.......
........ having come across this video on Youtube, I may have a go at brushing up on my Musical Spoon technique, this guy is seriously good.
In fact he is the actual 'Spoonman' on Soundgarden's single and video.
So if you don't hear from me for a while, if may be because I've been raiding the cutlery drawer, although this may all change when the sugar rush dies down.
This time tomorrow the exam will be in progress, so I guess with such little tile left there is only time to consolidate what I think I know and try and concentrate on essay plans and case studies
Looking at past exam questions from sections of the course and having spoken to other students, I'm hoping the exam questions are along the following lines.....
Question 1:
Politics not just for politicians, where does politics happen/can you avoid politics, can refugees or vouchers be political actors/political,
Question 2:
Hopefully a question around he values and problems of comparative analysis of politics.
Questions 3:
There has been a real variety of questions in this section, it is almost impossible to guess at what will come up, but if it is a bit left field and based on Gender Representation, then I'm ready......
Powers and Structures:
Another set of questions which are difficult to pin down, it could be anything but hopefully if it is something about the constraints of the power of the UK Prime Minister I'll jump on it.
Evidence & Argument:
Please be something asking what is more important evidence or argument or is evidence important.
On the plus side the last tutorial/day school hinted that the questions would be fairly open, rather than drilling down on specifics, so I hope that I can find at least 2 really good questions out of these 5 topics and one other I can have a reasonable stab at, and with luck see if I can fall across the 70% threshold.
Well that's me done for this evening's study. Lots of reading, nothing seemed particularly new - well it shouldn't I had read it before - but recognising text and ideas is very different from remembering them when the chips are down.
I'll keep plodding on and hope the revision is just a safety net and I have already done enough over the course to crack on with the exam.
If the worse happens then I'll just not count this module towards the final degree as it is only two of the three Level 2 courses which count - if that happens I'd better do well in the Economics.
On the upside, just two more evenings to revise, then Wednesday morning before the exam to panic cram and study is over for a few months :-)
I had to remind myself that I was doing this course for FUN, and at the end of the day the course mark should matter far less than the quality of the experience, but the whole 'exam next week' fever thing seems to build up and overtakes your rationality and you can find yourself thinking of little else and feeling guilty when not studying every available minute.
So, last night I had a complete complete night off.
Went to see Dave Gorman at Tring on his preview shows for his Channel Dave TV show which will be called something like 'Modern Like is Goodish'. Superb show, some re-worked 'old stuff', quite a lot of new stuff, some excellent twists, and the whole thing presented as for a TV audience. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Then got back in time to watch 'Question Time' and 'This Week' and play spot the theme and guess who's lying. So, we're never really that far from politics and this course.
...... which is why I've just spent part of my lunch hour reading an Open University text book.
Birthday party for a relative last night, tickets to see Dave Gorman tomorrow night, a colleagues illness now means I am on call on Saturday (and maybe even Sunday), so it looks as though events are conspiring against me.
I'll be glad when this is over one way or the other.
House guests, family birthdays and the unavoidable specter of work have done their best to disrupt any attempts at study, but for better or worse I now have crib notes on 2 of the three main subjects and have taken to listening to the course audios in the car - should maybe have started doing this a bit earlier.
I think my revision is coming together slowly, but I'm sort of relying on a big weekend of study this coming weekend to get me really confident.
And, I've further limited my scope of study. Having seen every past exam paper I can get hold of I am pretty confident that I would have been happy with any of the questions from Book 2, Book 3 and Evidence and Argument. Book 1 is a back up, as is Powers and Structures, but I won't spend too much time on them.
Email received from the OU today confirming the date and location of the exam, and very helpfully for anybody planning to orienteer to the exam venue the email contains not only the address and directions but also the grid reference of the venue.....
So, with time swiftly passing my revision plan has reduced to Books 1, 2 & 3 and the theme 'Evidence & Argument'.
The trick is to stop putting off serious study and get on with things, not easy with an extended holiday break starting tomorrow, oh well more to do in the last two weeks then :-)
The main things to be taken from the day school were,
The exam questions will, in all likelihood, be fairly open, meaning we will not be asked very targeted questions on a specific aspect of the course. The exam is to test if we have understood the course, not to see if we have revised very aspect of the book by wrote.
Take time and 'unpack' the question. Calm down and read the question, pick out the 'active words' and understand what aspect of the book or theme they wish you to focus the answer on.
Do not launch in to a well rehearsed discussion of a favourite case study, that is unlikely to answer the question, but know what aspects of case study can be used to illustrate your answer.
Got an email from the OU this morning titled "Getting ready for your examination". Full of 'useful' advice such as re-read your course texts and notes, and learn the key arguments and theories..... thanks for that, was rather hoping for a more targeted nugget of advice such as "if I were you, I'd be looking at these two books and this one theme - as we will be asking this........"
Oh well, better get re-reading and learning.......... the countdown has begun.
My tutor advised that we have a go at handwriting a section of text to get an idea of how much we can write in the exam, giving that the handwriting has to be legible and you need a bit of time to plan and some thinking time mid-essay.
I managed 120 words in five minutes copying a section of text, it wasn't as legible as it could have been, but it wasn't too bad.
So if I work on 10 minutes to read the question and set out the essay plan and ideas, 5 minutes during writing as thinking time and 5 minutes at the end to read and if necessary edit/add, that leaves me about 40 minutes of writing, which is effectively 1000 words.
100 - 120 words - into.
150 - 180 words - definition
210 - 255 words - argument A
210 - 255 words - argument B
210 - 255 words - argument C
120 - 145 words - conclusion
1000 - 1210 Words in total.
So, this week and over the weekend I'll get the materials needed for TMA06 together, and then the following week I'll see how realistic this schedule really is.
Decided to make an early start on the last TMA and the revision. The most striking thing is that I should have been using these revision videos at the end of each book before writing each of the previous TMAs, I seriously think I missed a trick in not reading ahead and spotting the potential that these video lectures had to concisely summarise each of the chapters and bring out the most useful points.
Oh well..... too late now.
We have a tutorial this weekend and I think the main points I want to get out of that tutorial are revision stratgeies for the exam.
We know there will be 5 questions, 1 from each of the course books in Section A, and 4 Questions from each of the themes (not center-periphery as that is TMA6) in Part B - chose 3 questions at least 1 from each section.
At present I'm thinking about revising 3 of 5 books and 2 themes.
The problem is that I'm not sure which books to revise. Book 1 is nice and short, Book 2 was about comparative politics, Book 3 about the UK politics, Book 4 was theory and ideology and Book 5 was Policy.
Or which themes are Power and Structures, Participation and Descent, Equality and Difference and Evidence and Argument.
