Posts by Brian Gooch

Stob latest: It was a cunning trick, says Open University

When in a hole, stop digging

I have now had a chance to look at my old records.

In 1982 TM361 TMA 1 contained a question that was open to interpretation: more than one solution was feasible. The marking scheme portrayed only one solution. To err is human, but is how you handle the error that counts.

Robin Wilson, the course chair, instructed that the TMA be remarked and the students' marks upgraded accordingly. No fuss, no bother, just do it, ... and it was done.

I will set out an analogy concerning the present fiasco. From medieval times it has been accepted that when a person performs well in his/her trade and has the recognition of his peers, he is called a master. Thus, today, for example, a master thatcher is so called because his peers approve of his having reached the collective high standard of workmanship. Should his work fall below par and the said thatcher is expelled, then if he were to continue calling himself a 'master' he would be guilty of misrepresentation. Misrepresentation is fraud and is an offence which is both actionable and punishable.

Now, an academic paper is vetted and approved by peers prior to publication in an institutional journal. If that paper is subsequently found to be below par and is withdrawn, then it no longer has peer recognition.

Here it would seem that a TMA of M885 refers to such a discredited paper. TMA questions are written each year and are therefore current. That an error was made in not checking the validity of the referenced paper is bad enough - after all the students were really being asked to comment on somebody else's personal and unapproved views, but to compound the error is inexscusable. Remember, the mistake is one thing; how you handle it afterwards is much more important.

As the precedence had already been set many years ago, the OU does not have any alternative but to remark the TMA, leaving aside the erroneous question, and marking it out of 85. The marks can then be proportionately upgraded to be out of 100.

The present toing and froing does the OU no service whatsoever: it just leaves it in desparate need of the moral high ground, but that it cannot attain from the way it has handled the situation.

When in a hole, stop digging. Just do the right thing.

Brian Gooch.

Some things do not change

My knowledge of the OU spans 22 years from 1978 to 2000 and I would like to comment in particular on points made by Dave Ashton, Edward Kenworthy and Luther Blissett.

Most OU courses have too much in them, and this becomes disproportionately worse the shorter the course eg. 2 x 15 pointers cause more work than 1 x 30 pointer. The trick is to optimise the work to achieve the best results. A good tutor can help here.

Correcting mistakes in the question has definitely caught us all out in the past but I have known a few instances where the marking scheme was amended after the event if sufficient students complained / appealed. Keep at it until the matter has been satisfactorily resolved.

Yes, you can also be penalised for providing a critical analysis - it is not generally liked anywhere and it is not just confined to the OU; and yes, by all means make you own mind up, but you still have to answer the question (sometimes swallowing hard in the process).

There is always a tendency for academics to jump on fashionable bandwagons when offering courses, whilst at the same time throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and a small number of courses do end up being badly written with the inevitable result of puzzlement and frustration. Given that, it is still down to each student to try and get the best out of it. That's life. Nobody should be put off having a go.

Experience says that if, for any reason, a course is not going well, it is better to ditch it and go for a close alternative. Cut your losses so to speak - it's better than struggling against the tide and becoming ever more dispirited.

If it is any consolation to Verity (and others) I can recall similar instances emanating from the same faculty in the past. Some things just do not change.

Brian Gooch

CodeGear: still for sale

Delphi

Hi

I have to say we like Delphi: we have been using it as our main development tool for over 12 years. In many ways Delphi code can be written like English sentences, and it is possible to devise the code so that it is normalised, that is, as well as the data in the databases.

From our point of view the problems arose once Borland had ignored the open source aspect and then over-complicated the approach by attempting to satisfy a wider range of platforms, especially .NET. As it happens, we provide our customers with customised database systems which have never seemed to need for .NET.

In effect we are market led, and find that Delphi coupled with the SQL databases and their respective tools gives us the flexibility, accuracy and speed that we have not been able to find elsewhere - and believe me, we spent a lot of time evaluating all the possibilities.

I think, along with many others, we are simply waiting to see which way Borland (CodeGear!) jumps... but at the end of the day it would be a crime to waste such a good IDE.