External examiners reports and the GenAI issue

I was grazing through one of the many mathematics forums a few days ago and I stumbled on a post that suggested that the external examiners’ reports for the last academic year (24-25) have now been released, so I had a look for myself. Sure enough, they were there for most curriculum areas, so I delved into the mathematics and physical science ones, since these are applicable to my course of study. The common theme in all the reports that I saw appears to be that GenAI is a massive problem for examinations taken remotely, and the recommendation being that there should be a return to face-to-face invigilated exams as soon as possible to avoid OU degrees being regarded as sub-standard. It was also apparent that the OU senior management were very reluctant to do this, almost certainly due to cost and logistical reasons. I honestly think they don't have enough staff to make the arrangements, as the exams used to be organised on a regional basis and the regions were dissolved a few years ago. I don't think any of the remaining centralised staff have the capacity to do it.

Of course, it's relatively straightforward to check a wordy essay for plagiarism or AI assistance by running it through the appropriate software, such as Turnitin, but science and mathematics-based content is much trickier to scrutinise since the answers tend to be either correct or incorrect, with very limited ways of reaching the same result or conclusion. I'm alarmed therefore at the number of students who have been subjected to an academic conduct review on the grounds that their submitted work has been plagiarised. From looking on social media, it looks like the OU have been somewhat overzealous on occasions in an attempt to maintain academic standards and shore up assessment integrity. According to some Reddit and Discord punters, the 'evidence' that the OU have used to make the allegation of cheating is flimsy to say the least, and tends to be something along the lines of 'we ran your answer through our magic software that detects plagiarism and you used a phrase that wasn't in the textbook'. No hard evidence is presented to the student, and the accusation vague enough to allow various interpretations about the specific wrongdoing.

It reminds me a bit like the old days when disinformation was disseminated that 'TV detector vans are operating in your area' and could tell if you were watching the telly without a licence. The truth was that the GPO (later outsourced to Crapita) had a list of all the postal addresses in Britain and another list of all the addresses that had a TV licence. They subtracted one from the other and banged on a few of these non-licenced doors hoping to catch the occupants with Coronation Street on in the background. The vans claiming to contain the 'sophisticated electronic equipment' that could detect you watching Mavis getting a touch of the vapours in the Rovers Return, were actually just a few empty metal boxes with analogue dials and flashing lights which looked plausible in the material used for propaganda purposes.

I suspect that many of the so-called academic conduct reviews are similar fishing expeditions, hoping that a few students will be intimidated into 'fessing up' in exchange for getting off with a semi-formal warning but still being allowed to continue with their qualification. The alternative would be to deny the allegation, which would put the release of the module result ‘on hold’ while a thorough investigation takes place. That could take months to complete, and nobody would want something like that hanging over them. There is, therefore, a big incentive to admit to something that may or may not have happened just to get the matter over and done with, even though the validity of the evidence is questionable. I'm not sure I like the sound of that.

Last tutorials before the Yuletide festivities & New Year break

This was the last week teaching week before the Mogmas and New Year break. I'm reaching the end of the Planetary Science part of the module now and will be moving on to the Astrobiology part towards the end of January, which is in three academic weeks time.

Meanwhile, I had three tutorials this week. The first was Part 2 of the MST124 revise and refresh bridging material. It was just as good, slightly better in fact, than the first one.

The second was a TMA02 skills tutorial. Like the other tutorials that this particular tutor facilitated, it was a bit self indulgent in places and it was taken in the direction of their own personal interests, but it did contain some useful hints and tips, so not a complete waste of an hour. This was the last tutorial from this particular tutor, so that was another good thing about it.

On Friday there was the final tutorial for 2025 with a tutor that I regard as very good. It was the one that had been postponed twice before. It concerned Chapter 7 & 8 of the Introduction the Solar System textbook. The formation of the Solar System is a difficult subject and the tutor covered all the highlights and important points very well. This tutor is the best I've had so far and  I've still got one more tutorial to go from them in the early part of next year.

On a totally separate note, The OU seem to think that my MST124 module materials will be arriving on Monday, but then again it is Yodel, so they might just throw the package into a hedge and run away. It's just as well that the module also has teaching materials in pdf form.

TMA01 feedback, a re-rescheduled tutorial, a NASA talk, Moon Night, and revision for MST124

TMA01 was marked and returned to me a day before the 10 working day soft deadline. 88% isn't a bad mark, but I would have liked it to have been in the mid-90s. Looking at the tutor's comments I can see it was marked fairly so I have no complaints. According to the assessment criteria, I only have to get an average of 24% in the 3 remaining assignments, or 72% in a single one of them, to be eligible to sit the final exam in June.

I got full marks for question 1, with a compliment about setting the planetary radii calculations out clearly. I seriously muffed question 2, with only 8 marks gained out of 16 available. The issue here was the lack of detail in my descriptive answer on early planetary formation. I got full marks for question 3 which involved plotting a spidergram, with comments about my explanation being very clear, and I only dropped 1 mark out of 19 for question 4 due to quoting the incorrect numbers of significant figures for the crater calculator result and not describing a particular type of crater well enough.

The tutorial on Chapter 7 and 8 of the Introduction to the Solar System book, which was supposed to take place on Monday 15th of next week was rescheduled for Friday 12th, and a few hours later rescheduled again for Friday 19th. This was done by one of the better tutors, so you can imagine what the others are like.

Every so often there is a talk arranged for the wider OU science community, not just those enrolled on the S283 module, and on Monday there was such an event. A NASA scientist gave an inspirational talk which was very good, even though it was really aimed at younger people starting off on a career in the physical sciences. Rather sadly, the scientist had just been made redundant.

There was another good tutorial by a science tutor who teaches on a range of modules, but in this case was taking a 'Revise and Refresh' tutorial which is designed to bridge the gap between the maths covered in S111 Questions in Science, a level 1 general science course, and MST124 Essential Mathematics 1, which I hope to be starting in February of next year. Most of it was revision for me, because I did A level Pure Mathematics back in 1980, but it was well worth attending because it was so well presented and there were a few things that I had forgotten. This tutor also teaches on MU123 Discovering Mathematics, MST124 Essential Mathematics 1, S111 Questions in Science, MST224 Mathematical Methods, MST210 Mathematical methods, models and modelling, S227 Core Physics, SM380 Quantum Physics and SM381 Electromagnetism so I'm hoping that our paths will cross again in future modules. Part 2 of this helpful bridging resource will take place in a few days time, which I suspect will be as good as Part 1.

At the same time as the Revise and Refresh session was happening, there was supposed to be a livestream of a ticketed 'in person' Moons Night event at the OU campus in Milton Keynes. Details were supposed to be posted a few hours before the actual event, but nothing appeared on the forums as far as I could see. There was also a rumour that it was being recorded for viewing in the future, but no details have appeared about that either. The nearest we got was a three and a half minute interview with ballet performer and former S283 student Erica Horwood by the module chair Prof David Rothery, which appeared on YouTube.

Rather interestingly,  I got an email from my tutor saying that the OU shuts down over the Christmas and New Year period, but as they taking some annual leave a week earlier, will therefore be incommunicado for the next three weeks or so. Without wishing to sound sarcastic, I don't think too many people will notice.

Waiting for feedback on TMA01

At the time of typing, my TMA has not been marked, but tutors are given 14 days from cut-off date to return marked work, so this would be 11 December for TMA01.

I had a tutorial last week which was supposed to be on Chapters 5 & 6 of the Introduction to the Solar System, but was in fact on a very limited aspect of atmospheric physics, probably because the tutor had a personal interest in it. Like the last tutorial by this particular tutor, there was some evidence of lack of preparation and it wasn't well delivered. I also felt that they didn't have a particularly good knowledge of the module materials. 

I received an email on Monday concerning my request for more tutorials. I had a nice email back saying that unfortunately due to logistical issues its not possible to convert a cluster-wide tutorial booking system into module-wide one. Although its technically possible to share the tutorial recordings between clusters, there are GDPR issues that prevent this. Apparently, another student has also asked to have more tutorials, so its not just me that thinks there isn't enough of them. That's fair enough, at least they took my request seriously and looked into it.

TMA02 has come around very quickly

With TMA01 out of the way, it's time to look at TMA02. This assignment doesn't have to be submitted until Thursday 15th January, but I like to look at the questions as I proceed through the module and make a few notes. S283 isn't a particularly mathematically heavy module, but the few assessable calculations that come up in the content appear to be saved for the TMA questions. I've finished Question 1 and I'm well into Question 2 already.

Question 1 (17/75 marks)

This question requires the calculation of the temperature of a fictious planet given its dimensions and the total radiated power it gets from its nearest star and asks about the limitations of spectroscopy as a remote sensing technique. There is also a sub-question on the calculation of escape velocity.

Question 2 (20/75 marks)

This question requires the calculation of the pressure at the centre of the gas giants and the composition of their atmospheres.

Question 3 (19/75 marks)

This question requires calculations concerning the orbits of asteroids and their classification.

Question 4 (19/75 marks)

This question relates to the formation of the early Solar System.

TMA01 has gone

The cut-off date for the submission of TMA01 is next Thursday but I really didn't want to leave it that late, so I submitted it a few days early. The first TMA of a module is always a tricky one to get right because it's difficult to know exactly what the tutor is looking for, and some have a few peculiar, and often inconsistent, quirks. As you can see from the progress bar, I'm about a third of the way through the module now.

Tutorial woes (again)

I had a rearranged tutorial on Sunday that was originally postponed due to a clash. That should have been foreseen so there was no excuse really. It wasn't one of the best tutorials I have ever had, and it was undoubtedly the worst so far on this module. The tutor appeared to have a very poor grasp of the actual module materials and just rambled on about what they felt like saying about a variety of different things just loosely connected with a small part of the topic. There was evidence of unpreparedness about the whole session, and some of the students attending appeared to know a lot more than the tutor, who was often challenged on various points.

The second tutorial of the week was an attempt to go over the skills required to complete TMA01. It was a bit too generic for my liking and I didn't find it particularly useful. It should be remembered that there are a range of students with varying abilities enrolled on S283 and this was mostly 'lowest common denominator' stuff. I think using somebody else's slide deck and not having a particularly good grasp of the module didn't exactly endear me to the session, as I regard it as a bit of a red flag. No harm done though.

On Tuesday I wrote an email to the module team asking if it were possible to organise the tutorials on a module-wide basis rather than a cluster-wide one. I wasn't expecting a quick positive reply but I received one that was both. On Wednesday, a senior-ish member of the module team said that they would look into making recordings available to all students but booking live events might be a bit trickier. This is more than I could have hoped for, and I'm positive that something good will come of this.

In other news, it was announced that the end of module exam will be on Monday 8th June. This is 205 days away from today. It's late in the May/June exams period, and is in week 33 of a 31 week module. The revision period begins on 16 May, which is quite generous.

Planets and Moons chat with the module Chair

On Thursday, there was a Planets and Moons Chat with the S283 module chair, Professor David Rothery and one of the module team, Professor Mahesh Anand. There are usually two of these held during the duration of the module and rather unusually the recordings are made available on YouTube sometime after the live event for anybody to view, not just S283 students. A tutorial covering chapters 3 and 4 of the Introduction to the Solar System book was timetabled to take place at the same time, so the tutor cancelled it the day before and rescheduled it for next Sunday. The email sent to students telling them about this change had the wrong date on it, so another one was sent shortly afterwards. Oh dear.

MST124 Essential Mathematics 1

I'm seriously considering studying MST124 Essential Mathematics 1, which starts in February of next year. It will overlap with S283, which is a good thing, because everybody knows that studying two 30 credit modules simultaneously is more demanding than a single 60 credit module. With S283 running between October 2025 & June 2026, and MST124 running between February 2026 & September 2026, the short period of overlap makes the whole thing manageable. MST124 is a prerequisite for MST224, which is essential (not to mention compulsory) for higher level study, including the Diploma of Higher Education in Physics. I'm hoping there are more tutorials in MST124, because I feel a bit deprived of them at the moment. S283 doesn't seem to have very many.

I've also been working on the completion of TMA01, especially the question on craters as I have just finished the chapter on this topic in the Solar System textbook. The crater calculator is a very useful interactive tool on the module website, and is used for Question 4 on this assignment. By the end of last week I reached a stage with TMA01 where I consider it to be more or less a 'release candidate' for submission. The cut-off date is Thursday 27th November. There is a tutorial connected with TMA01 timetabled for Friday 14th November, so I won't even think about submitting it until I've had this.

First real tutorial

I had a tutorial on Monday night that covered Chapters 1 and 2 of the Solar System part of the module. The tutor, although an associate lecturer with a full time job, did it really well and gave me every impression that they enjoyed teaching and actually wanted to be there. I can honestly say it was the first 'real' tutorial of the module so far. There was quite a good turn out as well, with about 30 students on average, reaching a peak of 35.

Working towards TMA01

As I had no tutorials this week there's not that much to say, but it's always good to look ahead at the next assignment, (TMA01) which has a cut-off date of 27th November. S283 has four TMAs with an overall nominal pass mark of 40%, but unusually the actual continuous assessment mark does not contribute to the overall grade of the module. TMA01 assesses understanding of the first four chapters of the book An Introduction to the Solar System. I've covered the material for the first three questions of the assignment, so I'm well on the way to completing it.

Question 1 – (15/75 marks)

This question involves calculating the density of unknown planets, from data such as mass and radius, and then suggesting which would be the most likely abundant elements present in them.

Question 2 – (16/75 marks)

This two part question asks for a description of the processes associated with the formation of the embryonic Earth and also asks for observations on the magnetic field of the planet Mercury.

Question 3 – (25/75 marks)

This question asks for the construction and interpretation of geochemical ‘spidergrams’ given a table of elements using a spreadsheet.

Question 4 – (19/75 marks)

This question involves the analysis of impact craters on Mercury using photographs and use of the ‘creator calculator’ interactive tool.

The tutorials have started

My tutor wrote to all of the tutor group late on Sunday night. It was part introduction, part apology for not writing sooner, and part reminder of an upcoming tutorial. I can't say too much about the personal content as it might identify them, but it seemed very sincere. It would have been nice to receive an acknowledgment of my introductory letter though. The TMA00 that I sent quite a while ago seems to have been ignored.

The very first tutorial of the module, which was a 2-hour jobbie, could best be described as clinical and impersonal. The tutor didn't introduce themselves, launched straight in the content, and finished by insincerely thanking all of us for coming, then ended the session quite abruptly. The area covered was mostly elementary mathematics such as rounding numbers to appropriate significant figures, ratios & fractions, simple geometry, logarithmic graphs & half-lives. At the end there was a bit on the Periodic table & normalisation. It may have been of some benefit to some of the cohort, but I felt it was an opportunity wasted, and it really didn't set the tone of the module particularly well. There were 19 students attending at the start of the tutorial, but this had dropped to 13 by the end of the 2-hour (with a 15 minute break) marathon stint. Due to the decline in attendees during the session, I suspect the other students appeared to be of the same mind as myself.

On Wednesday I received a very strange email from the 'Director of Teaching for Physical Sciences' no less, saying that a post-exam verification process was going to be put in place at the end of all level 2 and level 3 modules that have an online exam. This involves carrying out a 15 minute recorded interview a few days after the exam to verify the identity of approximately 15% of the candidates and 'asking a few questions' but it was all a bit vague. I suspect it's another half-cocked OU box ticking initiative which hasn't been fully worked out yet just to pacify the quality people.

I had a 'Meet the STEM Associate Deans' Microsoft Teams meeting on Thursday evening. Like all Teams meetings it had technical issues, mostly due to insufficient bandwidth, but it struggled on regardless. Not that much was particularly relevant to the Physical Sciences, but it was encouraging that some students raised the issue of the newly launched Biomedical Science degree not being accredited by the IBMS. The staff representatives handled, i.e. sidestepped, that one very nicely. It was great to see corporate diplomacy in action.

Quite late on Friday evening I had a tutorial from the tutor who marks my assignments. It was both similar in some respects but different in others to the first S283 tutorial a few days earlier. This tutor was far more personable and friendly, which is a very good sign, and they introduced themselves to the cohort quite nicely. There were about 8 attendees which is about normal for a 20 or so tutor group. The session contained the normal stuff about submission formatting, word length of answers, plagiarism, the use of AI, the end of module exam etc. It was progressing quite nicely until about 20 minutes towards the end when the tutor appeared to run out of things to say and started eating something. The tutorial then just petered out, which was a bit surreal to be honest. Although this was the best tutorial I've had so far connected with this module, the bar had been set very low.

Week 1 - We are on the move now

Today is the first day of the module proper, although I have been familiarising myself with it for a while now. Last Monday, my tutor emailed me about a tutorial they were hosting on Friday 10th October. I explored the module website a little further and I could see that all of the S283 tutorials were now ready for booking. There were 18 in total and only 7 different tutors, including my own. I'm not sure if this is a cluster-wide or module-wide ratio of staff to students. The first nine tutorials are listed here as an example of what lies ahead.

The forums are not exactly buzzing with tutorial news so I'm not what's going on here. I put all the tutorial dates in my diary and gave a copy to my wife. She needs to know these things.

My tutor group forum opened on Thursday 2nd but at the time of typing, there is no discernible activity at all on it. It doesn't help that there are too many fora to negotiate. There's a general discussion forum, a tutor group forum, a café Forum, an introduction to the Solar System forum, an introduction to astrobiology forum and a revision and exam preparation forum. 

Week 0 - Tutor news

On Wednesday afternoon I received my tutor details. This was about a week earlier in the study calendar than details were released for the module I did last year, SM123. Having looked up the tutor on LinkedIn, I must admit they're not quite what I was hoping for, but I can't complain. I'm not prejudging and they might turn out to be really good. The fact that they are active on the module forums is a positive sign. I used the dummy TMA00 as a vehicle to send them an introductory letter, so I've made contact but yet to receive a reply.

TMA00 awaits my tutor

This is week minus 1 of the module according to the Study Calendar. I did two more 'preparing for' sessions last week. Level 2 on Monday, and Level 3 on Wednesday. The level 2 variant was the session I was specifically invited to. I found 'Preparing for Level 1' a bit of a box ticker, concentrating mostly on student services, employability and careers advice. The 'how to navigate the website' component was more useful for students new to the OU than myself, but as I was gate-crashing an event aimed at level 1 punters, I can't complain too much. The level 2 event on Monday was slightly better. Not quite so much of the employability stuff and a bit more on student support. I did learn that some students on other modules have been allocated their tutors though, and that a particularly good quality member of the full-time OU staff is also a personal tutor on S283.

Also, in addition to the above, I made a tentative start to question 1 of TMA01. It was based on the first two chapters of the textbook An Introduction to the Solar System. The first part involved calculating planet densities and the second part was about the abundance of elements found in those planets. I particularly enjoyed the graph plotting used to visualise the main planet types.

At the time of typing, I still haven't received any tutor details but I have an introductory letter to this mystery person written and all ready to go. I will probably include it as part of TMA00, the dummy TMA that tests the eTMA submission system.

S283 Module website opens

This is the module homepage that became 'live' at midnight on Tuesday. I did the usual thing and downloaded as much as I could so that I can work offline. Rather unusually, the TMAs are all online as webpages, not as formatted pdf files. I made my own so that I can print them out and have paper copies. The assignments all seem very interesting, and I'm looking forward to tackling them.

It will be a few more days until information on tutors and tutorials are made available, and the next thing for me to do will be to book them and put the dates and times in my calendar.

Level 2 information event

A few days ago. I got an email inviting me to attend an 'informative but relaxed' online event on Monday 15th September with representatives from the three science schools. It said it will be an opportunity to 'explore the resources available on the Science Subject site and other school sites as well as discussing other helpful ways to prepare for the module'. There are three of these events being held, one for each of the three undergraduate levels and I was invited to attend the level 2 variant, although there is nothing to stop me attending the others I suppose. The Student Support Team and the Careers and Employability Service will also be involved, so it is probably the OU doing a tick box exercise.

This is week -3 (minus 3) and the S283 module website opens in a few days time on Tuesday 9th, which is the most important news of the week. I was a bit disappointed that the course chair Prof. David Rothery hasn't done his Introduction to S283 video this year, but I think he has his hands full with the BepiColombo mission, as well as working on the replacement for S283 provisionally titled S287 Planetary Science. Another thing of note is that Prof. Andrew Norton, the Undergraduate Qualification Lead retired over the summer. He has done so much for the School of Physical Sciences over the years that I can't help thinking that the astrophysics and associated courses offered by the OU will never quite be the same as they used to be.

S283 Module news

The S283 Planetary Science and the Search for Life website opens about 3 weeks before the start date, in common with a lot of OU modules. It's useful to familiarise yourself with the forums, TMA questions, important dates and course information before it actually begins. It also allows booking of the tutorials and will give tutor details. Getting a new tutor is always a bit of a lottery.

The exam period is usually between end of May to the start of June for October presentations so this is really not particularly useful information due to the big time frame but at least it is a reminder that the module has an exam at the end of it.

The most exciting part of the information on the student homepage is the despatch date for the two textbooks that S283 has associated with it. Sure enough they turned up on Thursday, delivered by Yodel. The OU still had my old address for materials dispatch so I had to tell Yodel to deliver to my new place, which they did without any fuss.

The SM123 blog has moved

I've archived my SM123 blog and it can now be found here. This blog will be used to document the next stage of my OU journey, which is S283 Planetary science and the search for life, starting in October 2025.