Mathematics and Statistics - OU Community Online

Recent research showed that 71 per cent of people considering access to Higher Education in England are either unsure or feel they don’t have enough information about the study funding options available to them*.

The video takes potential students on a whistle-stop tour through the Government’s tuition fee loans, financial support for those with low incomes, the OU’s own loan system OUSBA, employer sponsorship and paying upfront.



Bev Stewart, Director, Student Recruitment and Financial Support, says: “There is a perception that the increase in university fees has made university study inaccessible for many, but this isn’t the case. There is a wide range of payment options for new part-time students which means cost shouldn’t be a barrier to gaining a university-level education.”

How you can help spread the word
The OU is encouraging members of its community to spread the word about this video to help new students in England understand the funding options available to them, should they decide to take up OU study. You can share this link on your blogs, Facebook and Google+ pages and by sharing the message below on Twitter.

Find out more:

• Study for a qualification with the OU
• OU launches ‘ways to pay’ video for new part-time students

*Research commissioned by The Open University in April 2012 showed that 71 per cent of people interested in entering Higher Education in England were either unsure or felt they didn’t have enough information around the funding options available to them. The research was undertaken by DJS Research on behalf of The Open University. Sample: 1,590 respondents who were interested in studying at university in the next five years.

Marion Grenfell-Essam, 28, from Essex, has had ME since she was just 12 years old which means the smallest of tasks leave her utterly exhausted. But she’s found comfort in OU study, the flexibility of which allows her to work around her symptoms, and she plans on “studying for the rest of my life if I can.”

Forced to drop out of studying for a BSc in Applied Psychology at Cardiff University, Marion was overcome with depression. At the time, her mum was (and still is) studying towards a BSc in Psychology with the OU and “decided to bully me into finding an interest,” says Marion.

“She knew I had always expressed an interest in learning more about web design so she pestered me into signing up for T183 Design and the Web. That was the autumn of 2006 and I haven't looked back.”

'Perhaps the greatest support the OU gives me is home exams. I simply could never have completed any course with an exam if I had had to go to an exam centre'

“Most sufferers will experience headaches with many having to deal with migraines - basically headaches but with additional components: flashing light or auras, neck pain, light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, nausea even to the point of vomiting and skin sensitivity so that even light bed clothes can feel like someone is gripping their hand hard around your skin. Basically when it gets really bad your only option is go and lie down or lie propped up in a dark, quiet room.”

With day-to-day activities like eating and dressing making her tired, Marion sleeps a lot, but she can be awake in the early hours of the morning. So it’s the complete flexibility of OU study that allows her to work at her own pace and in short bursts if necessary, with support for her additional needs via the university's services for disabled students.

“Because I can't plan my good days and my bad weeks I can't always stick to the timetable. My tutors are always very supportive about giving me extensions if I think that a couple of extra weeks might make the difference between a partial TMA and no TMA. I find reading 12 size font just a little bit too small to be comfortable for me so the ability to read my Unit texts as pdfs where I can zoom to a size that works for me is great.

'Sometimes you just can't talk to your family and friends about what you're dealing with but you need to talk to someone and the other students on the forum always understand what you're facing'

“Where I want to read from the unit but would struggle to hold it open the OU provide me with comb-bound books so that they lie flat on my lap or table so I don't get hand strain keeping the book flattened to read. The use of iTMAs is a big bonus as it means I don't have to try and hand write anything with my sore muscles. At the tutorials my Learning Support team make sure I have a ground floor room close to the entrance so that I can easily walk the distance with the help of my walking stick.

“Perhaps the greatest support the OU gives me is home exams. I simply could never have completed any course with an exam if I had had to go to an exam centre. I can sit where I always sit to study with the light and noise levels set to my preferences and with my body supported to avoid muscle strain.

"I'm allowed 30 minutes of rest breaks so I tend to take at least two breaks of 10 minutes each and sometimes a third of the remaining 10 minutes depending on how tired I am and how the questions work out. I can use these 10 minutes simply to close my eyes and stop for 10 minutes or I can shift my papers and lie down on my sofa and catch 10 minutes sleep if need be.

“Because of the eye strain the OU provides me with large print exam papers on pink paper to avoid the glare off a white page.”

Reassurance that you're not alone
Marion’s an active member of the OUSA and Platform forums, which she finds “an enormous support”.

“Sometimes you just can't talk to your family and friends about what you're dealing with but you need to talk to someone and the other students on the forum always understand what you're facing. Even if they haven't gone through it themselves they usually have some sensible advice and often all that is really needed is the reassurance that you're not alone with having to deal with the consequences of this disease.”

Aside from study, Marion likes to read, watch TV shows from crime to sci-fi and has recently discovered blogging.

“Since January this year I've been feeling more hopeful for the future and felt that my brain state allowed me to at least string some sentences together. So I started by reading some of the blogs listed on Platform and when I felt I'd got a feel for it I took the plunge and wrote my first post.

“It allows me to crow about small accomplishments - like sleeping for nine hours and not two hours or 12 hours. It allows me to moan about the migraines or rave about a new book or TV show.

“With the short-term memory issues that go with ME it is generally impossible for me to remember what happened to me last week certainly not any further back and it is very easy to lose track of time between events. The ability to go back re-read posts to discover what I've been doing for the last three weeks or two months ago is a very useful by-product of keeping a blog.”







 

Their first edition captured a gap in the literature, and was adopted by universities world-wide as a course text.

The richly illustrated textbook captures the excitement and beauty of geometry, in a unified way following the so-called 'Erlangen' approach of Felix Klein (1849-1925) in which a geometry is a space together with a group of transformations on that space. The new edition addresses various geometries, including affine, projective, inversive, hyperbolic and elliptic, and ties them all together with the 'projective hierarchy'.

The new edition is dedicated to Wilson Stothers, a Senior Lecturer at Glasgow University and much-loved OU Associated Lecturer, who died in 2009. Some of the material appeared in M203, Introduction to Pure Mathematics in 1995-2004.

Find out more:

• Buy Geometry
• Qualification in Mathematics and Statistics
• Faculty website
  
   

The good news is that more than ten years of open2.net content has been moved to a new website at open.edu/openlearn, creating one home for all the Open University's free online learning for the public. 

The new site continues to support OU-BBC broadcasts, but also gives access to iTunes U podcasts, YouTube videos, free study units taken from OU modules and topical content, arranged under subject areas relating to the OU curriculum. 

There's lots to do - you can watch Evan Davis exploring the state of British manufacturing; explore the frozen planet; get to know the science and history of the Olympics or have a look at our study units in LearningSpace.

Any existing links that direct people to open2.net content will automatically send people to the relevant pages on the new site.

You’ll find more information at open.edu/openlearn. 

As part of an expert blog, OU Visiting Research Fellow, Peter Sommer makes  three predictions for 2012 related to issues around digital evidence.

This blog brings together all the responses to the call for predictions of developments in 2012 and beyond, whether affecting IT law, IP, data protection, e-disclosure, law firm technology or any number of vaguely related developments. Read the blog on SCL - The IT Law Community.

 

The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) has developed an innovative new search facility called CORE - COnnecting REpositories - to help academics, researchers and students navigate related papers from across UK Open Access repositories.

Current search systems, such as Google Scholar, used to find academic papers can deny users access to the full article, particularly when subscription fees are required and this often proves a frustration for scholars. CORE specialises in searches of the full-text items held on all approved Open Access repositories, ensuring a vastly improved level of accessibility for users. Anyone searching CORE will therefore receive better access to relevant results. In addition, the CORE system stores these downloads, so that papers are still available even if their original repository is offline, thus ensuring a reliable service.

The creation of CORE – symbolised with an eye-catching apple core logo - was funded by JISC and is accessible via an online portal, mobile devices or through repositories and libraries which have integrated CORE with their own search features. Researchers can be confident they are receiving the most relevant recommendations as the system is the first to offer similar articles based on the full text of papers and currently searches 142 British research repositories and libraries.

Senior Research Fellow at the OU, Zdenek Zdrahal, who led the project, said: “The Open University is at the forefront of producing new and innovative advancements in educational resources. CORE is an exciting addition to this history and we believe it will be beneficial to the academic research community and to the OU. There are plans to develop systems further, to aid research.”

CORE is already integrated into The Open University’s research repository, Open Research Online (ORO) which includes more than 18,900 research publications. It is hoped that CORE will be adopted for use in many other universities and academic institutions.

CORE received £40,000 funding from JISC and the project took place over six months finishing in July 2011. Andrew McGregor, JISC programme manager, said: “UK repositories contain a wealth of high quality research papers. This service should help make it easier for researchers to discover and explore this content. CORE is an exciting demonstration of how JISC’s investment in emerging semantic technologies is being harnessed to benefit researchers.”

Visit the CORE website. A 'how to' video will follow shortly - watch this space!