[Wolves] OU -- was: Re:For those inquiring on wednesday

[Chris Fox]

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Richard Smedley wrote:
> Indeed. For years OU have insisted that undergraduates have
> had MS Windows on their computers - eg to run the software
> for the Maths and Programming courses :-(
> 
> The recent move to Moodle is very welcome, but further
> and more fundamental change isn't conclusive.

It's not all doom and gloom though.

As part of the BSc Computing I'm currently studying M257 ("Putting Java
to Work") which uses the open-source NetBeans IDE and MU120 ("Open
Mathematics") which doesn't require the use of a computer at all. My
first course, M150 ("Data, Computing and Information") taught general
computing principles and a smattering of JavaScript, and there was
nothing on the course I couldn't do with OpenOffice and Firefox.

You're right though, there are other courses which are more problematic.
 The course software packages for both M263 ("Building Blocks of
Software") and M255 ("Object-Oriented Programming in Java") were
implemented in Java and would have been fairly trivial to repackage for
Linux/OSX, but IMO this suggests a lack of foresight rather than some
kind of unholy marriage to Redmond.

Almost certainly by accident rather than design but the OU's online
conferencing system, FirstClass, has both a web interface and
closed-source native Linux and OSX clients available from the vendor's
website (but not from the OU).

The largest issue in my view is more political than technical - the
requirement for most electronic assignment submissions to be in MS Word
97 format rather than something open like ODF. Again I don't think that
this is a case of the OU selling their soul to Microsoft, but a more
human problem. The OU's tutors (or "Assistant Lecturers" to use their
proper title" are possibly the university's most valuable asset, and
many of them tutor courses in their spare time for the joy of teaching
rather than for the paltry sum they get paid. If they're understandably
reluctant to move software from MS Office to OO.o, the OU isn't going to
piss them off by forcing the issue.

Cheers,

Chris
- --
Chris Fox (chris at robotninja.net)
And now, for something completely different...

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