{"id":1009,"date":"2011-02-09T08:01:10","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T07:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2011-02-09T17:38:24","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T16:38:24","slug":"has-a-module-changed-your-life-tell-us-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=1009","title":{"rendered":"Has a module changed your life? Tell us about it"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1976 TAD292 ,Art and environment<\/em>, was first presented at the OU. It dealt with<\/p>\n

the processes and attitudes of art not so much as these were evidenced in products of art but as they underlie the very act of doing art. This can be seen already from the titles which were given to some of the units in the course: \u2018Boundary Shifting\u2019, \u2018Imagery and Visual Thinking\u2019, \u2018Having Ideas by Handling Materials\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Students were offered a range of projects. These included the suggestion that the student stop activity and engage in listening. Another was to compose a score for sounds made from differently textured papers and a third was to enumerate the household\u2019s activities and categorise these in terms of role and sex stereotyping. The aims of the course were attitudional, sensory and subjective rather than cognitive, relating to feeling rather than knowledge. They were \u2018more phenomenological than conceptual in nature\u2019. Assessment involved a student not only submitting the product, such as a self-portrait photograph, but also notes describing the process and rationale. The criteria were not specific but involved formulations including enthusiasm, imagination and authenticity. This course took the OU some way from the image of standardized, central control.<\/p>\n

Dale Godfrey, born 1950, started to study with the OU aged 30 and with no formal qualifications. She graduated in 1986.\u00a0 She felt that<\/p>\n

The course that changed me most was a rogue course, TAD292, Technology, Arts and Social Sciences. The ethos behind the TAD course was you built your own hoops and then decided whether you wanted to jump through them or not. For one TMA [assignment] you couldn\u2019t use any words. That course was frightening and most satisfying at the same time. One of the premises behind it was that you should question everything\u2026 If I go to anything involving OU people now I can be certain someone will say, \u2018I bet you did that funny course\u2019. Maybe it just attracted people who were like that anyway, open to change and experiences. That\u2019s what the OU\u2019s done for me, it has made me think I have power. \u2026 We had one assignment where we had to go to the National Gallery and ask people why they were there. It was quite a good pick-up station. You can get some very strange answers to \u2018Excuse me, would you mind telling me why you are here? Even if you start with, \u2018I\u2019m doing an Open University assignment and I just want to ask you a few questions\u2019. \u2026 I\u2019ll give you a recent example. In September I joined a writing class for sheer relaxation\u2026 I just wanted to test out my creativity in writing.. we were given the task of writing a synopsis of a Mills & Boon novel\u2026 I looked at the ingredients and I worked with that so that when we came to reading our scripts out, mine was quite different from the others. It was only one sheet of A4 and I\u2019d been very naughty\u2026. It was taking the class on my own terms and I got terrific fun out of preparing for that evening. But without the OU and TAD I would have thought, \u2018This class isn\u2019t for me\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

Philippe C. Duchastel, \u2018TAD292 \u2013 and its challenge to Educational Technology\u2019, Programmed Learning & Educational Technology<\/em>, 13, 4, October 1976, pp. 61-66 (pp. 62-63).<\/p>\n

Dale Godfrey\u2019s interview first appeared in Patricia W. Lunneborg, OU women. Undoing educational obstacles<\/em>, Cassell, London 1994, pp. 4-10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1976 TAD292 ,Art and environment, was first presented at the OU. It dealt with the processes and attitudes of art not so much as these were evidenced in products of art but as they underlie the very act of doing art. This can be seen already from the titles which were given to some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1017,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/1017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}