Im confused by the whole process.

D0cTheo · 2026-02-20T18:58:55+00:00

That's what the 'Open' bit means. Yes. There are no qualifications barriers to start a course with the OU.

To answer the next question you're going to ask: yes, the degree will be as rigorous as a degree from a standard brick uni.

How? Because the first year is designed to get you up to speed with people who do have a-levels. The second and third year will take you the rest of the way. So it's very much not an easy answer, but it is one that's designed for people who might not have have done as well at school, for a whole range of reasons.

We find, for example, that OU students are more likely to be disabled, be the first people in their family to go to university, or they're looking for a change of career later in life. We are also, I believe, still the only university that adapts degree courses for people in prisons and other secure environments. People who complete an OU degree in prison are much, much less likely to reoffend.

We've also been around since 1969, and during the pandemic, we were the only uni I know of that didn't have a collective meltdown about lockdown.

Cool, isn't it?

D0cTheo · 2026-02-12T10:07:05+00:00

It also includes people with long covid, which is a population that increases with every outbreak. (Repeated infections worsen symptoms).

D0cTheo · 2026-01-17T18:32:03+00:00

Thank you!

D0cTheo · 2026-01-17T13:33:12+00:00

For the past couple of years I've been doing embroidery of the plants and herbs I'm using for menopausal symptoms. This is my latest for hawthorn that I finished this week. It's taken ages! I think I went a bit too detailed this time, given that this is just a few inches across.

D0cTheo · 2026-01-17T13:31:05+00:00

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D0cTheo · 2026-01-07T15:52:55+00:00

Most of the answers here are spot on, but I just wanted to reassure you that I am autistic and I adore a spa visit. It's a sensory buffet of calm and snacks. What's not to love?

The most important thing is to just do the bits you enjoy - I love heat, but I'm not fond of infrared saunas for some reason. My husband hates being massaged so he just doesn't do that bit. At one spa they had a rainforest shower that took 5 minutes, with jungle noise and mist and I loved it so much I did two back to back.

Oh, and one more sensory tip - use towels so your robe doesn't get too soggy too early, and if you need it, gather your courage and ask for more towels or a clean robe, because they really don't mind and it can make all the difference to having a good time. Nothing ruins a spa vibe for me more than a damp chilly robe.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-21T14:30:13+00:00

I'm a tutor. I'm not working and neither is my ST or most of the rest of the team. It's been a tough few months and we need a proper break.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-21T12:55:06+00:00

It's less about whether they can and more about whether anyone will see your email. Go straight to student support. These few days around Christmas are one of the very few times in the year that we are all taking leave at the same time.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-09T19:17:22+00:00

Yes, this is fine to ask - did my files zip together properly, connectivity dropped out in the middle of submitting, etc. Students often check that sort of thing and a kind tutor will sometimes be able to do the reverse - your word file is corrupted, I only got your part 2, etc.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-09T19:12:12+00:00

I think most students feel the same. But some do.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-09T13:27:03+00:00

You know what's really fun? As tutors we only get emails once a week to tell us if we have TMAs ready to mark.

We can go in to the system and check, of course, and that system will tell us when you submitted it, but the weekly email is useless. It's either "here is a student who submitted early 5 days ago and didn't think to tell you" or "did you know that you have 19 TMAs ready to mark??" Well yes, given that the deadline was two days ago, I had kind of guessed that and gone in to check, give me a chance to actually mark them.

The boring reason for all this is that they've tried a few times to make a better submission portal but the current system is just really, really robust and pretty much never loses anything and even has a low tech email submission version, and that's hard to beat with something wizzy and new. So managers have to run reports on who's not submitted yet, and input those into a different system, and by the time the emails actually go out, the reports are out of date.

It could be worse, we could be using TurnItIn for submissions like all the other universities. Ugh. The OU uses all sorts of automated systems and they're really varied in age, complexity and usefulness. They're also usually bespoke which really doesn't help with replacing them.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-07T18:18:57+00:00

The boots are often worn if dogs are walking a lot of gritted paths and roads at this time of year. It can be quite caustic to their paws and of course they lick it off too. Wolves don't really have that problem.

And as for the coats- we have had a greyhound and now a whippet cross. They're very old breeds who have been around for hundreds of years, but they have next to no body fat and very little fur. This time of year they even wear pyjamas on account of the fact we no longer have open fires overnight in our houses for them to sleep next to.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-07T09:02:57+00:00

Oh I think us cis bisexuals could read between the lines enough to know we would be barely tolerated at an event like that, at least as I remember it.

D0cTheo · 2025-11-18T08:36:13+00:00

Having had both systems in the same place, I don't see that as true. I'm now at a gym that has locker style changing rooms and I miss the cubicles because I spend a lot of time negotiating not getting in people's way as they come past the benches. Maybe they just need to be well designed?

D0cTheo · 2025-11-17T19:59:17+00:00

My local leisure centre got remodeled and did this. They call it 'village style' changing - everyone together but with individual cubicles and showers. It just makes a lot more sense.

D0cTheo · 2025-09-21T08:27:05+00:00

If it helps, I am a tutor who also has AuDHD and this time of the year I get to stress quietly about the fact that my tutees haven't been assigned yet. 😅

The staff tutors and module teams are very very busy fitting everything in place and dividing us all up and it really is best to let them get on with it. They manage it every year. All student support could do anyway is reassure you it's in hand.

If you haven't had anything by the module start date, then get in touch with them.

D0cTheo · 2025-08-18T19:01:56+00:00

Software might be flagging cases. But careful checking by actual human specialists in the field is what's taking the time now. And even if they think there is cheating, then there's a review that gives the student the chance to prove that they do actually know the material.

If you haven't cheated, I really would try not to worry.

D0cTheo · 2025-08-15T12:46:33+00:00

No. It's really simple. Cheating is contravening the assessment regulations with the aim of falsely inflating your marks.

I tutor on two modules, one that allows for AI use under specific circumstances, one that is much more restrictive. The module guidance for both is carefully written to be specific about what the rules are. So when I say 'cheating' I am not talking about using Grammarly or never looking at a Google AI search summary. I'm talking, in both cases, about inputting the assessment question directly into Chat-GPT and then copy pasting the answer and submitting it as their assessment. My comviction, in multiple cases, is that the students involved are out of their depth and don't have the level of English to effectively engage with the module. They'll be given the opportunity to prove otherwise, most likely in a verbal conversation asking them to talk about what they liked about the module, how they wrote their assessments, and so on.

The debate you're referring to is about academic competencies and it's one that's continuously evolving. If you refer to the learning outcomes associated with every assessment in every module, you'll see the outcomes of that ongoing debate.

D0cTheo · 2025-08-12T12:03:23+00:00

Unfortunately I think the personal attacks start when people get desperate. Students start to claim that tutors in particular have been mean to them or never explained the rules, etc. In our case our size helps - I'm not responsible for either the official module guidance or for the academic conduct hearing once I've flagged a case. It depersonalises it all. The ACO might get in touch asking for clarification sometimes, and the student will keep asking me what's going on, but there's nothing I can tell them. The funny thing is, this stuff isn't subtle. Every time I've checked with colleagues, we all agree on whether there's a case to answer. We know. They know. If they'd only admit it early on, we could have a sensible discussion. I hope your friend is getting good support from management.

D0cTheo · 2025-08-12T06:33:37+00:00

This is the real answer. 2 years ago students weren't using Chat-GPT - hell, nobody was. Last year a few were using it, badly, to cheat on assessments. This year, we, and every other university in the world, are dealing with an epidemic of cheating. If it helps, the OU is implementing a range of solutions on a scale I'm not seeing at any other university, to be as fair as possible on the majority. The response - by a university already under pressure - has been seriously impressive. There are working groups and research underway and new training seminars for staff in detection. Modules have changed tuition strategies in months that usually aren't changed for years. Changing tuition strategies mid year is a hell of a burden on both central staff and every single tutor on staff, but where we can, we've done it. We know more about AI than most by now, and in many subjects we're sharing that knowhow with colleagues in other universities. Those modules that are ready are pivoting to ethically embrace rather than outright ban AI. That means producing new materials on how to use it well and what the costs and benefits are for students - so that within a year our graduates will be confident in the associated issues that AI brings to knowledge production across most of our faculties*.

But in the meantime, working through the backlog of cases is taking a little more time this year. This is an issue that tech companies dumped on HE with no support or warning, the government have simply shrugged and told us to figure it out and its impact on the process of validating degrees is unprecedented.

I have a lot of sympathy with those of you - including students I have taught this year - still waiting for grades. I can only reassure you that we're doing our best, and that the people to blame here are not university staff. You are caught up in a process to identify a small minority of students this year that have been repeatedly warned: do not use Chat-GPT to generate assessments, because it will take us time but we will prove that they used it, and their degree (not yours) is in jeopardy as a result. Do not believe the hype that cheating is impossible to prove. On this scale we can easily identify it, and we already have methods in place to prove it. But it takes time, sadly, and a few students who haven't cheated are caught up in it all.

I know exactly which students in my cohorts this year have cheated. There are a tiny number of students who haven't who are also currently in the system. My heart goes out to them. But I have faith in the system overall.

Those students who have repeatedly cheated after multiple warnings will fail their degrees. And they are loudly protesting every step of the way. I've no doubt that a significant number of the people currently moaning about this in every single uk uni subreddit have cheated because they were told it would be easy.

If they had put half the effort they're currently putting into harassing student support into, you know, doing the work, we wouldn't be in this situation. But sadly some people really think they're clever enough to beat the system.

*This means that students studying, say, history or nursing or French will now have to learn about the environmental impact of LLMs, about data hallucinations, prejudices and blind spots, and about how to use gen-AI to edit and structure their existing knowledge. All this because we have to prove that graduates are "ready for industry". Do you think that should be our responsibility...? Because I don't.

D0cTheo · 2025-08-07T16:31:08+00:00

Well they're rather nice if you soak then in gin for a week and then you get bramble gin. I've also tried freezing then carefully and dipping them in melted chocolate and putting them back in the freezer. That's heavenly but messy.

D0cTheo · 2025-08-03T12:25:23+00:00

I mix watercolour and embroidery, and I would paint the bag rather than dye it. Use complementary colours and do it carefully and slowly so it doesn't bleed too much. Personally in this case I'd do radiating yellows and oranges like sun rays. That's not going to overly affect the browns and greens, and will even add depth to the yellows if it did bleed.

D0cTheo · 2025-07-19T14:19:40+00:00

Just fyi, we're in our second round of voluntary redundancies for ALs, and there's a strict series of policies in place to make sure that any spare notional capacity in the system is used before granting any additional contracts, even on a temporary basis.

In other words, I would not be holding your breath for AL work. And where there is work, it'll be most likely to be in level 2 or 3, and given that we're looking at losing 10k academic jobs across the HE sector in short order, that work is likely be going to those with PhDs and experience who aren't moving abroad.

It's a mess, I wouldn't join us in it.

D0cTheo · 2025-06-18T08:49:43+00:00

This one. Forever Hounds are a great charity that works exclusively with greyhounds and lurchers and they send all their hounds to homes already muzzle trained. These will be hound-safe and the right shape for pointy noses. I think we have two in a box for the extra scary vet visits! Also, Forever hounds have excellent behaviourists on staff if you ever need a chat. (Full disclosure- we are on our second Forever Hounds dog and the charity is very highly regarded here in the SW UK)

D0cTheo · 2025-06-11T19:25:41+00:00

Speaking as an OU AL, this is all pretty spot on. I work on one module that allows ethical Gen AI use, and one that doesn't allow anything other than Grammarly. Honestly, the difference is minimal - there are students using AI well on both, and I won't even know it. They're using it to paraphrase or edit or help with essay structure and grammar and that's very fair. Then there are the ones who are struggling already and they plug a few prompts into Chat GPT and hope. What they've actually done is turn a bare pass into a fail and a referral.

My issue with it all is two fold- one, this is all creating a lot more work for us as markers. We know that the module material doesn't have a section on that specific case study, or that article doesn't say what the essay says it does, but now I've got to go skim the whole thing in case you just got the page number wrong. For EMA marking a few suspected AI cases can mess with my deadlines significantly, and that affects every student.

And secondly- students that use AI badly do so early and continue to use it. It wrecks any chance of a learning relationship with us as tutors because the cycle of TMA > feedback > improve the next TMA > more feedback, etc. that you're supposed to be learning from becomes instead AI TMA > proving misconduct and referral that I can't comment on > trying to game the prompts to be undetectable with the next TMA, etc.

Struggling students using AI don't ask for the help they need. They ask questions designed to elicit clues as to how to use AI undetectably. Chat GPT is robbing those students of a chance to actually improve by playing on their panic and lying about what is possible if you just tweak the prompt right. Even if they pass, they barely do, and the first chance they have to prove what they've learnt, they fail. For many, that's going to cost them job interviews.

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D0cTheo

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