I’m sure if they were honest, a lot of people find themselves in that situation. Perhaps you figure that a degree would help you in your job or maybe you’d just like something of a hobby. It’s difficult too because you probably think that the university people will laugh at you when you say you don’t know what you’d like to do.
In reality they are very helpful when you go along to them and many universities even run open sessions where they’ll advise you what subjects are available and give you a chance to talk to some of the tutors. But it’s still a scary thing to do sometimes: the way around that is to check out their website and order a prospectus of their undergraduate courses. That’s basically a catalogue of all of their courses and usually contains a brief writeup of, usually, several hundred courses.
The key to getting going is to completely ignore any thought as to what degree (if any) that you might finish up with and instead to look through the courses to find something that interests you. Don’t worry about what faculty it’s in for now, just look for a course that’s under the heading “foundation” or “level one”.
If you follow our earlier example of the Open University you’ll find that there are hundreds of courses to look at organised into around 20 separate faculties (subject areas). It’s going to take you several days to look through the prospectus and chances are you’ll end up with a list of 20 or 30 courses that interest you.
Once you’ve got a short-list, the best thing to do is to go to their website to check out the full details of the course (there’s just a summary in the printed prospectus). For example, say you fancy Engineering the Future you’d go their website and find that it’s a 30 point level one course with start dates in October and February and that it’s got an associated residential course. Eh? What does all that mean?
Well, level one means that it’s an introductory course and you’ll be able to start it without having to do any courses before it. It’s got two start dates means that you can start it either in October or in February. The associated residential means that there’s a one week residential course that will let you practice a lot of what you’ve learnt (associated means that you need to sign up for it separately). Finally 30 points means that it counts for 30 points towards the 300 that you need for a degree (or 360 if you want an honours degree) and therefore it should take you around 7 or 8 hours a week to do it.
It’ll tell you what degrees you can count it towards too although don’t worry about that at this point.
Finally, you’ll also find reviews from previous students. For example, for our engineering course there are two useful comments:
- “An excellent and very interesting course. I picked it fairly randomly to fulfil a 30 points from another qualification requirement based mainly on the fact the name sounded interesting and am overjoyed that I did so. The course materials were well written and informative and the content was fascinating.” and
- “I took this course as a filler in between finishing MST121 and starting T207. The course work is not that heavy and it is quite easy to get ahead. The topics covered are quite wide and will give a broad introduction into the field of engineering. I would say that having a decent grasp of maths would help as there is a bit of calculation required. The TMAs and exam are similarly structured and if you are able to complete the TMAs to a reasonable standard the exam should not be an issue.”
The first is typical of this course: nearly all say that it’s fascinating which is a good type of course to start with. The second indicates that you might want to know some maths for this course and that the workload isn’t that heavy (ie you could get it completed in much less than 7 hours a week).
One other thing that it says which you’ll probably missed is “You may be interested in free and open educational resources from this course available on The Open University’s openlearn website.” What this means is that some of the course modules are available, free of charge, at OpenLearn. Whilst you’ll not get course credits for studying them on OpenLearn, it’s very worthwhile signing up for it and trying out some of the courses that they have. None are complete courses but are aimed at giving you a feel for what a particular course might be like.
Finally, don’t forget that it doesn’t matter what course you start with! You can change your mind as to what degree you’d like to finish up with and lots of people do exactly that.
Arnold.
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