On previous courses there was a certain amount of discourse, between members of a tutor group, via the conference systems run by the OU. The relevant conferences would be available from your ‘desktop’ when you logged in to the conferencing software. For this course there is nothing. Oh, there is the normal ‘course news’ conference, which is read-only, but nothing else. I’m doing a level 3 course (3rd year of degree level) so maybe you are just supposed to fend for yourself now. Who knows. Personally I miss the amusing putdowns and one-up-manship (where does one hyphenate that?) that went on. Also, I’m feeling just a little bit alone on this course.

I’ve received a reminder from my tutor that there is a tutorial this Saturday (the first one), so hopefully there will be Other People there. If I hurry, I can get my first assignment done and handed to my tutor too. For some reason this course doesn’t use the fabulous e-TMA system, whereby you submit your files electronically; this course requires dead-tree versions to be snail-mailed to the tutor. No more minutes-before-cutoff-time frantic assignment-attempts. I will have to plan things. Yeesh.