I had another skills tutorial yesterday on maths for SM123. It was really just a review of rounding numbers, significant figures and standard notation etc, but it was very good for what it was. The tutor had a lovely Irish accent and was really easy on the ear. The only thing about it that was disappointing was the number of participants. It varied between three and five throughout the hour long tutorial, which out of 670 or so potential students, really is dire. I don't know if it is due to poor advertising or just student apathy, but it's not a great use of the Open University's limited resources.
However, the main news since the last post is the progress of the 'group of four' collaborative weather station data activity. One hasn't shown up, one of them is me, and the other two appear to be bickering. The main problem being that they overcomplicate everything. If you are looking at hours of sunshine for example then you don't need to look at rainfall and temperature, but some people think otherwise. It's really frustrating. This 'activity' should have finished on Friday, but it's still rumbling on and that eats into write-up time. Luckily I've been writing up TMA01 as I've been progressing, so no great panic, but it would be nice if I could just finish it off and get it out of the way.
Other groups are just as bad, if not worse, and have turned 'over egging the pudding' into a whole new ball game. They have brought in statistical analysis from other modules, rolling averages, multi-coloured trendlines, and more graphs and variables than you can wave a stick at.
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