Exams

Alex: At school I got the standard 25 per cent extra time, but it wasn’t a very useful 25 per cent extra time, because at the end of a 3-hour exam 25 per cent isn’t that much and it also pushes you over the edge of what most people’s concentration span is.

With the Open University I was able to type, use a laptop to type my responses, I can type a lot quicker than I can write, and that meant that I could make best use of the 25 per cent extra.

I also had a home exam which was surreal to say the least, I definitely had a positive experience of a home exam, but it is an interesting experience, quite invasive at times, and if you’re a very personal person or have a very big personal space I think it could encroach on that quite a bit, and you do need some technical know-how so the invigilator can see your exam paper or what you're writing, but I had an overall very positive experience.

That the OU was prepared to consider all these different exam arrangements for me was again, it made me determined to really get the best out of my exam so actually for me it was a determining factor in how hard I worked for the exam.