Open University Geological Society (London Branch)

Welcome to LOUGS! Feel free to browse around, find out who we are, or even register for Geological Events.

Reinstated Talk

Our speaker for May 17, Dr Paul Logan had to cancel his talk due to work commitments overseas. Fortunately for us, his plans have changed again, and he will be able to deliver his talk after all.

Volcano Live

Those who attended Lorraine Fields' recent talk on Erta Ale will recollect that the BBC will be screening live shows from a volcano over the Summer. Volcano Live, presented by Kate Humble and Iain Stewart, will run from 9 - 12 July from Kilauea. More information here.

Website Updates

Due to upgrades on the Servers, changes to our webpages became necessary. We have taken the opportunity to revamp the site, a process which will continue over the next few weeks. In the re-organisation, care has been taken to keep certain popular pages in the same place, but you may find you need to update any bookmarks you have made.

If you need to access any of the old site content urgently, please email info@lougs.org.uk and we will endeavour to accommodate your request.

OU Funding Petition

There's an e-Petition to the government about cuts to OU funding, set up by the OU branch of the University & College Union. It needs 100,000 signatures to trigger a parliamentary debate. Please consider signing, and spread the word: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22316

OpenLearn

A useful resource provided by the Open University is OpenLearn giving everyone free access to OU learning materials. The project, launched in 2006, contains more than 8000 study hours of learning materials across all disciplines.

From LearningSpace, there is a topic index. The "Science" component contains chapters or sections of current OU science courses (level 1 to postgraduate) as well as some of the discontinued courses (for example S182 Studying Mammals and S278 Energy Resources).

If you register on OpenLearn (also at no cost) you can participate in associated online activities and forums and keep track of the courses you have looked at, alternatively, you can just (anonymously) browse through the content.

Additional free resources can be found on the Open University channels on YouTube and iTunesU.

The OU is also part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium where you can access course materials from contributing universities across the globe.