Dr Anne Campbell

Dr Anne Campbell

September 2018

Hello!

Welcome to S282 Astronomy. Note that there is a lot of information in this letter: it is a good idea to keep a copy to refer back to. If you lose it, there will be a link to it on our Tutor Group forum (see below).

I am your tutor for this module which means that I will be marking all your assignments(TMAs), running online tutorials and will be available for you to email or phone with any enquiries about the module. My contact details and times are in the online document at which you should print out and keep handy.

The module

This module is a really interesting introduction to astronomy. You will be finding out about stars in part 1, starting with the sun, how they are formed and what happens to them when they eventually burn up most of their hydrogen and evolve into white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. In part 2 we will take a tour through our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and out beyond to other galaxies, studying what they are made of, how they were formed and looking at some of the strange objects in our skies like quasars and radio galaxies. Then we get down to asking the big questions in cosmology: Where did the universe come from? What does it look like on a large scale? What will happen to it?

About your tutor

Perhaps you would like to know a bit about me. I have worked at The Open University for many years, teaching various modules at this level and at level 1. However, I have been working in astronomy for even longer as I lectured in astronomy to adults for ten years at Glasgow University, and before that I was a researcher in astronomy in the field of gravitational waves. I have also worked in a few other areas of research including microwave physics and atmospheric physics. (If you want to know a bit more about me and to see what I look like, you can look up myProfile online in our Tutor Group forum).

About you

I would also quite like to have a little extra information about you. Could you save, fill in and return the form at email it back to me? - just to let me know a few extra things about yourself, if you don’t mind.

Your starter for ten – S282 ‘Boot camp’!

You should make sure that you are up to speed with the study skills, maths and background physics needed for this module. There is a ‘boot camp’ currently running until Friday 5th October covering all of these, plus a whistlestop tour of how to find information on the website. Join my colleague Tom Wilks for this boot camp and you will be in a great position to start the actual module.

Forums

We have an Online tutor group forum accessed from the module website: it is really easy to find in the Forums tab, so if you have not yet done so, pop in to say hello to our group, and subscribe to the forum. This forum is for the use of everyone in our small tutor group. I will use it to give you any information that I think is important, and you can use it as another way of contacting me or as a way to chat to the other students in our group about the module. This will be our self-help group area, so do use it!

There is alsoa Module forum for you to discuss the module with other students up and down the country, although for specific academic or other support you should use our tutor group forum or get in touch with me directly. You might also like to say hello in the Café forum if you are starting before our official module start date (the café forum closes on module start date).

Note that the module team uses theNews on themodule website (top righttab on the site) to keep you informed about any changes or problems in the module, for instance in the TMAs. This is a very good reason to log in to the S282 website regularly, at least once a week,as well as to use the module calendar to check what you are meant to be doing in any one week.

Tutorials

Our tutorials are all online. This module uses a combination of synchronous online rooms tutorials for tutor groups AND asynchronous forums or synchronousonline roomstutorials for the whole cohort.

Our tutor group tutorialsare just for students in our small group and will be held using our Online tutor group room, which is found in the Tutorials tab on the module website. The online rooms software we will be using is Adobe Connect. It is easy to connect, easy to use and you can join in from home or work, or anywhere that you can get a computer and internet connection, so I hope you will come along. It is best to join in online rooms tutorials with a laptop or a desktop computer if you can, although it is possible to use a mobile device instead with somewhat reduced functionality (but I think you would find a phone screen just too small).

For online rooms tutorials, you should buy a computer headset with microphone so that you can join in properly. There are some very cheap and perfectly acceptable headsets available in the big supermarkets, as well as on Amazon, and often they cost less than the travel would cost to a face to face tutorial – and the headset will be well worth it. Our first tutorial will be on Saturday 27th October at 10 am and will last roughly an hour: put that into your diary, and I will be in touch soon about the timing other tutor group tutorials and how to access the tutorials.

Forum online tutorials for the whole cohort will run in discussion forums on some weeks throughout the module. There will also be someonline rooms tutorials for the whole cohort held in the Online module-wide room. (I will be running one of these tutorials on Saturday 9th February.) You will be able to find these tutorials on the module website through the links in the online calendar or in the Tutorials tab on the website.

TMAs

Please get TMAs in on time if at all possible. If you have good reason why you cannot make the deadline please get in touch with me first and ask for an extension. Sometimes I may be able to grant more time, other times I may not, but you must ask me first. Don't just send it to me late, or I may have to return it to you un-marked. Remember also that I may not be able to grant extensions for the last TMA. However, I understand that everyone has difficulties with time every now and again, and you'll find me quite sympathetic.

You should send your TMAs in electronically through the eTMA system, which is very easy to use. If there is a problem with you submitting a TMA electronically, do get in touch with me early to discuss the options. Acceptable formats in S282 are Word 2003 documents, .DOC, Word 2007, 2010 or 2013 documents, .DOCX, RTF documents or PDF documents. My preferred format is one of the Word formats if possible, preferably .DOCX. For spreadsheets, it is best to submit in .XLS or .XLSX formats, but get in touch if you don't know how to do this using Open Office.

When you send in your eTMAs, be sure that you submit only the final version, as I can download and mark the eTMA any time after you have submitted it, and would not then accept a different version: you must not use the system to store part done TMAs (as you might have done previously in an EMA in previous modules).

New to the OU?

If you are new to the OU, or wanting to brush up any study skills, you might find it useful to have information on Learning Skills. You can look at the resources, or download some toolkits, from the Skills for OU Study site: . I personally find some of the information and toolkits really useful!

Getting starting on activities

Lastly, I encourage you to make a start on the observational activities as soon as they are available on the website, as the time disappears very quickly! There are some tips about uncertainties in the solar/sidereal day project at

I look forward to hearing from you and to meeting you at our firstonline rooms tutorial.

Best wishes,

Anne

Dr Anne Campbell

S282 Associate Lecturer

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