A new academic year begins

And so the new academic year begins. This year I enter Level 3 and I'm taking more modules, hoping to complete the Law degree by next summer. It's going to be an interesting time ahead.

The shift from one level to another is quite a different experience from going forward from one academic or school year in a bricks & mortar institution. Whether it's university or school, there's a continuity of people around you and a shared experience so you return to familiar faces and surroundings. But with distance learning, you're not returning anywhere physical or seeing anybody after a time away. Instead, you're just going back to your desk at home. So all the focus is on waiting for the new academic year's module website to open.

The start to a module is often a bit staggered, with the website opening a few weeks before a module formally begins. This allows some students to get ahead but things can be complicated if tutors haven't yet been allocated whilst the online forums for most modules I've done often don't open early enough. One result is that very few students make the recommended online posts from module activities so it's harder to . Everybody studies at their own pace and around their own schedule so some will want to start ploughing through as soon as possible whilst others choose to follow the formal schedule and await the online tutorials to help them. There's no one right way to do things.

Level 3 sees students split off onto different pathways, which I'll discuss in more detail in later posts. It's by far the most diverse of all with many possible module combinations so my experience will be very different from many other students on other routes. So let's see how it goes.

(Image created with Microsoft 365 Copilot.)

Getting your module results

There's a strange limbo after one submits an End of Module Assignment (EMA). The module is over but the results aren't through for some time. Other demands, including other modules, can absorb time but there's still a sense of wondering that can't be satisfied one way or another until the result arrives. And that will take quite some time.

(And yes there's a reason for this, lest someone from the Open University staff be reading this and wants to point out the amount of time it takes to mark, moderate, externally moderate, work out overall marks and any adjustments and so forth. It's inevitable it takes time but that doesn't change the waiting experience.)

And then comes the day when one gets one or more of their results. With all the speculation this involves.

The Open University's systems are complicated and one effect seems to be that results don't always come out at quite a pre-announced "big bang" moment. The day of results can shift a bit. With one module I had both a delay of many days announced due to major systems failing and then also a release a couple of days earlier than the revised expected date. And then once the marks are out, it often seems to take a few days for all the relevant parts of the site to catch up, so I sometimes have a final mark in one place, a promise of a mark in a second and a blank in a third. Eventually everything is displayed correctly but not immediately.

Related to this the announcements that the results are out don't always come at the same time. So sometimes the first I've learnt that results are out has been messages on social media. When I've logged into the website there's been a message there - but the email to tell me to go to the site to look hasn't come until later. It makes for interesting fun, especially if I'm out and about with only the phone to check on.

My previous study was in a different era with most things submitted on paper and overall results coming in the mail or announced at a set time on a noticeboard. There was a similar sense of speculation and randomness with the post (although in those days it was much more reliable) but not the odd way of learning results were out through instant messages.

All this adds to the tension as one goes to see what their actual result is, perhaps added to by comments online as one person declares they did terribly whilst another is shocked to have done so much better than expected. And then the chaos as one clicks on the wrong link and then has to go back before eventually making it through to find the dreaded header "Overall module result", looking down and seeing the result. It's a nerve wracking experience but it has to be done.

Unless one decides to do something radical. But unfortunately with results coming online it's not possible to make a paper aeroplane out of an unopened envelope and throw the unseen results into the air, as happens at the end of The Paper Chase. Still there's nothing to stop you printing them out for a substitute effect - the plane in the picture at the top was made out of a printout of my Contract Law result because I thought of the film's ending and decided to homage the scene. But unlike Hart in the film I made sure to read my results first.

(Photograph my own.)