OU or OCA

I

ianjmatt

Messages
255
Name
Ian
Edit My Images
Yes
I am taking this year off from my regular study I do and wanted to do some photography course instead. Looking at the OU T189 'Digital photography: creating and sharing better images', or the OCA course 'Photography 1: the art of photography'.

The OU course seems to be peer led and is only 10 weeks (and half the cost of an OCA course). The OCA one seems more tutor led, but is only 8 hours a week - I think it is really designed to be studied alongside one of the other level courses. OU obviously do their own validation - and I have a lot of respect for them (in recruiting I have always valued their post-grad stuff on a CV), but OCA are validated by Bucks University.

Anyone have any thoughts?
 
There's a few of us on here doing OCA. Check out this thread and you'll find our online learning blogs, which will give you an idea of how much work is involved.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=284247

OCA suggest 8-10 hours a week. How long it takes is how much you put into it. Nothing to stop you doing more a week.

I liked the OCA as I can do it in my timescale, and it leads to recognisable qualifications if I keep it up.

TAOP, the first module, starts with some easy stuff and you rattle through the exercises quickly, then the requirements get a little more difficult. I've just spent a day photographing an outdoor scene every hour to record daylight levels, now I need sunsets and (luckily) a cloudy, rainy and sunny day, so sometimes you may be waiting for conditions.
 
I've never done either course, but the OU Photography course has had some v poor feedback, mainly because there is no tutoring and all critique comes from other students. It strikes me as being nothing you can't get from a book and an online forum like this.
 
Photo Plod said:
I've never done either course, but the OU Photography course has had some v poor feedback, mainly because there is no tutoring and all critique comes from other students. It strikes me as being nothing you can't get from a book and an online forum like this.
Click to expand...

This forum would be even better as the tutor groups with the OU are just too small. If you're unlucky you can find that only two or three people participate. I used to be an OU tutor and it makes me despair, the way that they're cutting quality for 'bums on seats'. Most students don't actually want to learn anything, they just want the bit of paper saying 'pass'.
 
I did the OU course a few years back, when I was new to using my DSLR (I'd had it ~2 months when I started).

As an intro / beginners course it was fine - it confirmed and reinforced a lot of what I had already learned via various forums.

It was not organised like a typical OU course, but was instead entirely on-line.

For me, the system of feedback was both a strength and a weakness.
Each week everyone had a photo assignment, typically requiring 2-4 shots, and could post up to 10 (I think) on the private forum. When you did post, you were grouped with 9 other students to form a little group for that weeks posts. All pictures were also generally available to view and comment on.

The problem was that if, for some reason, you posted towards the end of he week, you would get much less critique on your shots - since the group would be made up of others who also posted later (and so were either struggling, or busy). The critique would also generally be closer to 'nice shot' than helpful ideas for improvement.

The strength was that it encouraged you to learn to critique everyone else's photos, which required you to analyse the good and bad points in the images; which in turn helps when considering your own compositions.
 
I'm a student on the OCA course and, as per other replies, the fact that you can do it at your own pace is a great bonus! No pressure when life gets in the way and you know you can get to the end - this makes it much more enjoyable over OU.

Also the tutor is great - regular constructive feedback. The only thing I don't like is I don't feel part of a group or community - it feels more 1-2-1 as you are not encouraged or invited to collaborate with other course members. Maybe this is because we are all at different stages?

Still, I think it's a great way to study and will definitely continue with OCA.

Aly
 
A good point ma above. My tutor is excellent, my last assignment feedback was over 5 pages so you really get some detailed feedback and the feeling your tutor has put some serous thought into your work and his reply. He's always there should I need some further clarification.

Feedback from other students is minimal, but possibly because we are all on different stages, but because we have to blog our exercises/learning, there's plenty of previous students work to reference should you require to.
 
I did the OU course last year - it was dead cheap due to Tesco Clubcard Vouchers, and it got me a copy of LR3 at Student discount, which saved a lot of money overall - but due to work committments (I was away from home for about 80% of the duration) I took very little use of the "peer review" aspect of the course - which I don't really consider a great loss! In fact, a large number of the final pictures I submitted were taken several months before I even started the course...still got a fairly high score, so dunno what all that proved! :cautious: !

I did get some detailed and well-considered analysis of each of those pictures from a tutor a few weeks after the course finished, which was the only aspect of the course that was superiour to spending a few months on a forum like this... To someone completely new to photography, it covers all the technia cal basics (aperture, shutter speed, etc) but doesn't really look at composition or creativity - but its 10-week "taster" course aimed at everyone, what do you expect!


I've now signed-up to the OCA for TAOP, the "do it at your own pace" aspect was particularly appealing as its impossible for me to commit to a conventional schedule due to erraticness of work. Start next week...
 
I considered the OU course some time ago and discounted it due to the feedback that I found for it regarding the nature of its presentation - basically as Photo Plod said above.

(I should add that I have studied several other OU courses and found them all to be well presented and arranged).

If I was going to do some photo-based study, I'd be very tempted by the OCA course.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top