Best OU courses?

[changer22]

I started on the Beginners French in the Autumn and love it.

I went to a 'regular' university but think the teaching and material is far better with the OU and wish I'd done my degree with them. Looking through the online prospectus, there are so many courses that I want to do (mainly for personal interest at the moment) that I wondered what other people had done and which ones they would recommend.

My best so far was S250, science in context. They do have a wonderful course planning tool though, which lets you work out what qualifications you will get if you do certain courses.

I've enjoyed all of my OU courses, tbh! Courses that I've never heard a bad word about are AA310 (Film and Television History) and AA312 (Total War and Social Change), but both of these will be ending soon

The social science courses I've done tend to get much more mixed reviews for some reason. I enjoyed them immensely though, particularly DD201 (Sociology and Society) and DD308 (Making Social Worlds).

I really want to do Total War partly becuase it sounds so interesting and partly because of the reviews.

I'm thinking about doing it before it finishes for the interest factor. There's an attached summer school too isn't there?

Annyoingly the language courses (which was what I set out to follow) have a very set route with no additional options, so it's hard to justify the expense of a mega historical course.

Are you doing the Modern Languages degree, changer?

I'd also like to do Total War but I'm following one of the degree paths that allows you 60 points 'free choice' so it is an option for me to finish my degree on any course I want next year. I'm torn between Total War and AA300 European Culture and Identity (which is an option for the Languages degree, I think). I think that one has more mixed reviews than AA312, which is universally adored, but AA300 has the advantage of an ECA instead of an exam.

Well that was my original plan - french and spanish. But... I would really like to do the Italian modules - there's already a beginners and next year an intermediate. There isn't a degree which incorporates those apart from the European degree which is soon to end or an English/language degree and I'm not really too keen on doing the English part of it.

There's a ridiculous part of me that doesn't want to get an 'open' degree but a named one. I want to be able to say that I have a degree in Modern Languages rather than one containing language options.

I'm just off to check out AA300. AA312 has some new (less glowing) reviews!

I feel the same about named degrees v 'open' ones. I don't want my degree to look like I have studied a random ragbag of courses. I could have done both AA312 and AA300, but that would have resulted in an Open degree, so I decided against it. Not sure if I made the right decision: it probably wouldn't make a bit of difference in the long run!

I've just read a recently posted review of the Italian beginners course which sounds like it needs some tweaking so it looks like it will still be french and spanish for me. What will your degree be?

Oh that's a shame - my DD is thinking of signing up for the Italian course (Andante). Mind you, new courses often have teething troubles which get ironed out by the second or third presentation.

I'm doing a Social Science degree (with sociology and meeeeeeja studies)