Sunday, July 3, 2016

What a distance travelled: reminiscing about H800

Hi everyone

If you are reading this, you may have found it as a prospective or existing student of H800. It feels emotional reflecting on our distance travelled as a family since I completed this course. We have been back home in England for 5 years now. Our lovely determined son has just sat his GCSE exams (16+ exams in the UK), and I have finally embarked on my Masters in Research Skills and PhD, in the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU.

I was thinking back to my H800 learner experience in 2009.  Of course some of the technology has changed now. Elluminate video-conferencing has been replaced by OU Live, and the discussion forums used to run in something called 'First Class'. But here is the mind map of my learning experience that I did at the time; I think it pretty much sums it up. Hard work; wondering sometimes how I would ever keep up and fit it in with the rest of life; having a few 'critical moments' and eventually prevailing and reaching the final goal posts. Seven years later, I look back and see what a turning point it was.