T189 actually started on May 1st which was a Tuesday so the weeks are a little unusual. Nevertheless, students are forging ahead eagerly and the number of week 2 images that are already on OpenStudio is quite daunting.
Back to the problems with OpenStudio – I suspect the tech teams are working frantically behind the scenes this evening because not only is OpenStudio timing out repeatedly, but so is the T189 website itself. So students can’t access either of them. It doesn’t help that the section on the website titled ‘News’ has been unavailable for almost the entire first week of the course which is rather annoying. A simple message explaining the problems would have been a good way of saving a lot of students a great deal of anguish. It’s obvious that a lot of thinking caps are going to be needed to make sure this kind of fiasco doesn’t mar the second presentation of T189. Knowing the OU, I’m pretty certain that they’ll have ironed out the glitches ready for the October 2007 start.
In the meantime, despite the obvious grumbles and declarations of extreme discontent, the T189 forum conference discussions roll onwards, gathering newly arriving students and dispensing invaluable information from more experienced folk on the course.
