Travels and M364

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I started M364! I’ve been to Japan and the US since then.

It’s been really interesting – and it tied in more with my work than I expected. It turns out I’ve done a lot more interaction design in my time with DCC than I thought. I particularly enjoyed one of the TMAs, which had a case study about a small community in a specific type of culture. We had to discuss what effect the culture would have on the high-level design of a care system, based mostly on the first four of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

^ I think it’s okay to talk about that, since the TMA has long passed, but if you’re from the OU and you want me to redact the above information, please let me know!

I’m going to the first tutorial I can make, on Saturday, at Southampton Solent University. The others have been held in Reading, which was a little too far for me to consider getting to. Yes, I could drive, but the length of the tutorial against the length of the travel didn’t seem so worth it. At least I can have a nice direct train ride to Southampton Central on the South West Trains line, and then it’s quite a nice walk across some green space in Southampton to Solent University. A very nice university, I should add! They always seem to be very helpful and accommodating to the OU and its students.

Well, my exam is coming up a fortnight on Wednesday – it’s on the 8th October. I don’t know if I feel confident yet, but I’m sure after this weekend’s revision lesson I’ll be feeling better. I can only do my best!

If anyone has any specific questions about M364, please let me know and I’ll be happy to let you know about my experiences. :)

Library website, referencing, and plagiarism.

Hey everyone! Just a quick post to share with you that the Open University library section of its website has had a bit of an overhaul by the looks of it.

This is the new equivalent of the section I most used to visit on the old site: Referencing and plagiarism. While references are very important in most assignments on most Open University courses, you must make sure that you reference them correctly. Otherwise, you can be in all kinds of trouble!

There’s another page on the OU website about how they respond to plagiarism. This is common to all universities; everyone in the academic world takes plagiarism very seriously.

I know referencing can be tedious and time-consuming. One of my favourite tools for referencing is Zotero, which is a Firefox plugin, and can also connect with Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. They’re developing applications and plugins for other platforms – I’ve just downloaded the standalone application for Mac OS X, so I’ll let you know how I get on with it!

Edit: Here’s me using the desktop version on Mac OS X! I’m using the Safari plugin to send page references from Safari into Zotero desktop version, and I’ve also added The Manager’s Good Study Guide using the ISBN wizard.

Zotero standalone version (Mac OS X)