This morning, the Open University announced to its students (via our homepages) and a little later on, to the whole world (via their Platform website) that they were going to make some changes to “… bring OU terminology closer to the rest of the higher education section [sic] and to adopt the language most students are already familiar with.”
Three pieces of terminology will be changing:
“Points” will become “Credits”
“Awards” will become “Qualifications”
“Courses” will become “Modules”
This all seems a bit strange and you have to wonder at the discussions that went on as part of this process. I’m not particularly bothered by the changes, but I’m also not sure why it merits an announcement that has no impact on any outcome of studying with the OU whatsoever.
The change to “Modules” from “Courses” seems particularly odd and potentially undermines one of the real strengths of OU study. If I look at (say) the 3 year degree in Computer Science at Warwick University, sure enough, it’s made up of a number of modules. You can therefore make the case that using the term “module” to represent a component part of a degree brings the OU into line with the rest of the academic world. However, OU “courses” can and are taken as standalone entities by many people, and you can’t take a “module” off the Warwick Computer Science degree in the same way. So actually, a “course” is a far better description of what it means to undertake a year of OU study than the term “module”. And what of OU short courses? Are they now to become OU short modules?
The announcement of “Awards” becoming “Qualifications” is also strange, but in another way. The term “Qualification” has been used for many months, if not years by the OU already. By way of an example, the screenshot below was taken from my homepage this morning:
My student homepage 30-06-2010
In fact, I find it difficult to find the term “Awards” used anywhere much within the OU website, with the exception of references to the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Curriculum and Awards and the Awards and Ceremonies office. “Qualifications” had pretty much already drowned it out in common usage.
As for “Points” and “Credits” – well, ECTS values already sit alongside points values on OU student academic summaries and appear to run at an “exchange rate” of 1 ECTS credit to 2 OU points. The worst possible thing the OU could do is to start calling “Points” “Credits” as well – far better simply to abolish points and denote everything using ECTS credit values. Maybe that’s what they intend to do – but there’s no detail on that in the announcement.
As much as I’ve been impressed by the standard of teaching, course materials and dedication of tutors during my time studying with the OU, I’ve become far less impressed in the way the institution communicates with its students. I sincerely hope that its communication with government is far better, given the perilous economic times we now live in.
Some folk in the OU seem to have very short memories. When I was first thinking of doing something with the OU they referred to full credit and half credit courses (60 and 30 points these days)!
I think for full consistency “short courses” would need to be renamed “extramural courses” although that obviously wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense in the OU. That still leaves the naming of the new 15 point courses which don’t come under the heading of short courses.