Open University/Part Time education/ Nightschool

[formerly known as hf]

I'm just about to sign-up for an Open University course to keep me amused before I go into postgrad study October next year, and was wondering if anyone here has ever done any part-time education from home and had any advice, pointers, experiences they'd like to share?

[Kev Milsom]

Good for you, HF…I’ve looked at the Open University courses quite a few times over the years and it seems a good and flexible way of studying.
I’ve taken a few courses from home in the past, and I guess the main aspect I found was keeping up the commitment and energy, and not finding easy distractions around the house…lol. I found that I needed to be a lot more disciplined than I had originally thought.

I’m currently looking to study from home again, and looking for a suitable course online, but after reading your post I’m wondering if the Open University might also be a viable option.

Good luck on your course…what are you studying btw?

[Jos Elkink]

Kev?! You're alive!

I've never done an OU course, but have often considered it . My idea was that after I graduate, I'll do a stats course in the evening or something. Now I attended one class in stats here and I'm not so sure anymore ...

[rklenseth]

I always want to go take classes in video editing even though I do it professionally for a living. But I would always like to see different schools of thought plus I figure it would be an easy A anyways if I decide to try to get a college degree but the media business is all about who you know and if they like you.

But no, I'm really too young to know myself and I don't really know anyone who ever did parttime, night, or at home school but I can imagine if you're used to an 8 hour work day then the added hours of work will be hard to adjust too. I went from 8 to a 9 hour work day and somedays as much as 15+ hour work days. So adjusting to that took me some time. Plus I was going from night to overnight shift back and forth. Now I've firmly been planted in the night shift so things are a little bit better in that regard.

[formerly known as hf]

The job I have for next year isn't going to be all that gruelling, although the setting should be interesting (I'm a support worker for a local council authority's Drug Intervention programme - they basically want me to gather and produce performance stats for the programme so they can keep going)
A single OU course, just 60 credits from Feb to Oct seems a good way to keep me occupied.

Not sure what I'll do yet. Either a postgrad-level course in youth studies, or research methods in social studies, or a lower-level course in something that I'm interested in, but haven't studied much, like 20th Century Art history, or psychology

[Junesun]

I'm presently an instructor at http://www.internet-live-seminar.de, which offers courses in a lot of subject areas. The courses are held online using the Webex system, which allows for some really cool interaction, and they are supplemented by a phone conference at the same time. Unlike with OU, there are no local meetings. This company is not yet very big and the site is available in German only as of now (though English courses are planned), but I like it because they're about the only alternative to Volkshochschule courses, unless you live in a big city. Everybody knows that with a Volkshochschule course it takes you several years to go beyond the "Hello. My name is ___" stage in language learning...