Current goings on and a big welcome…!

                                

Director, LSE External Study Rosie Gosling welcomes students onto University of London International Programmes at the Singapore Institute of Management induction day.

First of all, may I welcome all new students onto the programme and welcome back all continuing students.

Continuing registration

Just as a reminder to continuing students, please remember that all continuing registration forms need to be returned to the University of London by the 10th October 2010. The University have e-mailed all students a copy of the continuing registration form, however if you have not received this e-mail please contact the fees office (tel: 020 7862 8366 or e-mail: ipstudents.fees@lon.ac.uk)

The sooner you submit your continuing registration form, the sooner you will receive the printed study materials for the course/s that you have chosen to study.

Choosing courses

From this year onwards the term ‘Unit’ will no longer be used, and will be replaced by ‘Courses’.

When making ‘course’ choices, please remember to check the structure of the degree that you are studying and the prerequisites for each course. It is also important to check which courses you should take if you would like to receive exemptions from professional bodies (see page 14 of the EMFSS Prospectus) or for access to a future Master’s programme.   

If you will be completing next year and want to apply for a Masters’ programme start thinking about this now! You make need to take a GMAT or GRE test and so you should start preparing for these.

Selection groups and degree structures are outlined clearly in the 2010/11 Regulations, available to download as PDF or new for this year, as a series of HTML pages and in the EMFSS Prospectus.  

To help you make better informed course choices and begin studying earlier than ever before, the Course information sheets, updated reading list and full Subject Guide for each course is openly available to view and download from the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Virtual Learning Environment

The VLE can be accessed via the Student portal.

Once logged in, click on the Study tab and add the courses that you wish to study or explore to your online course list.

Your login details to the Student portal should have arrived in your study pack, however if you have not received them or have forgotten them please e-mail the support team at support@londoninternational.ac.uk remembering to quote your student number. Institution tutors should contact externalstudy.vle@lse.ac.uk

If you are a new student and have not yet registered, you will not be able to access the Student portal and so you should refer to the first four chapters of each subject guide, available on the public website, to make informed course choices. You can also view the course information sheet, updated reading list and past examination papers and examiners commentaries from the public website.

Study materials

Whilst on the subject of study materials, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you refer to the latest version of the reading list on the VLE or the public website. The reading list printed in the subject guide is often out of date since the subject guides are not re-published every year.

It is also essential that you check the documents listed under the title ‘Important Documents’ on the home page of the VLE. Here you will find the list of examination changes (available shortly) and the list of subject guide revisions for 2010/11. It is important that you refer to this list so that you can be sure that you are studying the most recent edition of the syllabus.

As an example, for 2010/11 the following guides have been re-published and updated on the VLE:

05a Mathematics 1 – 10% revision

05b Mathematics 2 – 5% revision

21 Principles of sociology – 20% revision

116 Abstract mathematics – 10% revision

42 Optimisation theory - 5% revision

There have also been a number of supplements published to be used in conjunction with current subject guides. Some of these are printed and sent out with subject guides, others may just be available online via the VLE so it is important to check the list of updates and the course pages of the VLE to access the essential supplements.

Examinations

Remember that if you would like to sit for examinations in May/June 2011 you must submit an Examination Entry Form by the 1st February 2011. All information on registration for examinations can be found, here.

Kick Off day 2010

And finally, I would like to remind all students that the annual Kick Off day will be taking place on Saturday 25th September at the LSE. For full details on this event and to book your place, please see the Kick Off day website here. You can also join the LSE External Study Facebook group and visit the Kick Off day Facebook event page.

We will be using the hash tag #kickoff10 on Twitter to discuss & share tweets about the 2010 Kick off day, so please do remember to use the hash tag #kickoff10 on the day and in the run up to the event in your tweets.

Graduates

First of all, many congratulations!

We wish you well for your future and hope that you will keep in touch with the University of London Alumni. You should expect to receive your graduate certificate are in November when they are normally sent out.

Good luck with your studies!

LSE External Study

 

School’s out for summer..

 

Now that the examinations are over you must all be feeling very relieved, but as I wrote in my last blog, you may also be feeling a little deflated but don’t worry this is quite normal. Now it is our turn and marking is proceeding in earnest. Each script is marked twice, checked and checked again before the mark is sent to the Board of Examiners. That means a lot of work for us all, but it is vital because we must ensure that each script is given the mark which it deserves.  Remember that we mark your examination scripts to the same standard as we do for internal students, so we have to be very careful. The mark which you will achieve will be based on your performance in the examination.

This year your marks will be available online and in my next blog post I will be able to inform you of the process to access these.  (We hope to have all the marks out by the end of the first week in September). 

If you are not graduating this year, you should soon be planning which units you wish to take for the next session. You can enrol on any unit you want to find out about on the VLE, so you are able to access the subject guides of every unit to get some understanding of the content and approach of each unit and allow you to make well informed unit choices. (This isn’t the same as registering with the University for your units so look out for your continuing registration form and materials questionnaire which you need to return in order to receive printed guides).

You should start now by doing some background reading in preparation for the next session. Make sure that you choose units required and/or available on your chosen degree and check any pre-requisite units carefully (see the Regulations). Most importantly, check to see which units you need to take if you want to receive exemptions from professional bodies or for access to a Masters’ programme. 
If you will be completing next year and want to apply for a Masters’ programme start thinking about this now. You make need to take a GMAT or GRE test and so you should start preparing for these.

If this is your last year, we wish you well for your future and hope that you will keep in touch with the University of London Alumni. They should be contacting you soon. If you are going to start another degree or qualification I hope that you will use the knowledge and skills gained from studying our programmes and particularly what you have learnt about how our academics tackle the key questions in their disciplines.