Tutor contact

A very strange thing happened on Saturday. My MST124 tutor sent me an email reminding me of the upcoming assessment cut-off dates. It's the first time in my OU history that a tutor had done that. I emailed them back and asked if they had read my TMA00 and told them that I had TMA01 on my laptop ready to go. I also said that I hadn't obtained my iCMA41 mark yet. They replied, but didn't really engage with my issues. We only exchanged gossip about the the comparative weather as we live in different parts of the UK. As you can see, the module webpage suggests that I'm 35% of the way through this module, but as my progress so far mostly includes pre-start and introductory malarky, it's a very misleading figure. I'm actually just starting week 4 of a 30 week course. On Sunday, I had a tutorial entitled 'Puzzles with other students'. To be honest, it was as bad as it sounds. I only saw a maximum of 8 other students at the event, and when breakout rooms were mentioned, I made my excuses and left. I lasted all of 10 minutes, but I used my time wisely and listened to a pre-recorded tutorial on functions and inequalities by a very good tutor.

Had the first of two tutorials specifically aimed at completing TMA01 on Tuesday. It was advertised as a drop-in session with a tutor that I hadn't had before. It was very poorly attended for a module-wide event concerning a TMA. The session lacked structure, or purpose really, and I got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the tutor didn't particularly want to do it. It finished early. I did however learn that the iCMA scores are released a few days after the cut off date because they are checked manually to ensure that the computer generated questions are not ambiguous or insoluble.

On Wednesday the iCMA42 questions were released. They cover Units 2,3 and 4. I did exactly what I did with iCMA41 and printed the questions out so that I can work on them without being tied to a laptop screen. In the evening, I had another tutorial which was advertised as a double hander but one of them had double booked so I just had the more experienced one of the two. This session was on graphs & equations, which is a Unit 2 topic. I'm a bit undecided on these double handed tutorials. They certainly have their merits, but I can't help thinking they are a just a bit of a gimmick. I don't think I lost anything by only have one person doing it, and in some ways it may have helped.

One Friday, I had the second and last of two tutorials on what is required to complete TMA01 by a tutor that I haven't had before. This tutor was more 'old school' and the tutorial was more structured and more useful as a result. Since I now have all the information I need, I can submit TMA01, which I will probably do tomorrow.