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9119 OU 2 - Marketing Courses in Maintenance
For the year first year or so at OBS my attention was focused on two existing courses in the Diploma, the marketing course P677 and the international marketing course P671.
This had its pleasures, not least of which were the residential schools. At that stage most of my schools were not too far away. The one I used the most was at Dunchurch, which was about 50 miles north of Milton Keynes. It was a nice easy drive up the M1 and then the M1 spur. The other main one was down at the Civil Service College near Ascot. Both of these had excellent teaching facilities and the rooms were comfortable, or at least the ones I was given were – though, as I was course director, I got the best rooms. But we also went to the occasional hotel such as the one just on the outskirts of Oxford, which had the extra benefit of a swimming pool.
These weren't even the best of the venues, though, since those in charge of allocating the venues made certain that Andrew Thompson, as Dean, went to the best one of all -- which had its own golf course where he spent most of his time playing rounds.
Unlike my colleagues I never taught any of the sessions. I didn't feel that, as course team chair, I wanted to get too close to the ‘sharp end’. I was worried that it would unduly influence my thinking about the course. Instead I spent on my time gathering input from the tutors who were teaching the various sessions. Indeed, working with these tutors was a joy. Some came from industry, but most came from other universities and colleges. I learned more from them than from my colleagues at the Business School. Equally, I didn't mix too much with the students. I suspected that they would be on the best behaviour with me, where they were more relaxed with their tutors. Accordingly I put most of my effort into getting them to build their relationships with tutors.
Instead, I was course director. It sounded like a high status job, and I suppose in some respects it was. If the course director was not there then the regional director had to step in to take responsibility. But, in reality, I spent most my time rushing around, sorting out the details and doing all the photocopying. I used to have a school assistant, usually from admin in the local region, and we used to work well as a team. It was, I suppose, a responsible job when things went wrong; but almost a non-existent one otherwise. In the event, my courses were well bedded in, and didn't throw up any major problems. At that time though, on one of the other courses in university, the course director had to deal with a tutor being murdered by one of the students!
I really only had one problem student. He was in fact on a international marketing weekend school. Surprisingly, I can't remember these schools, as my comments on this course elsewhere demonstrate, but I now realise we must have we must have had residential schools for P671. That shows you just how much impact they made on me -- though this course was only run once a year. Returning to my anecdote, I first ran into problems with this student when, on the first morning of the course, the domestic staff came to me and complained that the he'd been sick all over his room. They were charging the extra for cleaning the room. I went to see the student, to make certain that he was well again after his illness. His only comment was "I had a skinful last night". That didn't endear him to me. Later on I failed the same student because of his overall work on course. Even though it wasn't examined, he failed every stage. He came back very angry, and that's when I had to point out to him that one of his essays, which had called for understanding how you set up foreign operations, gave scarcely the best of answers. He had graphically described the bribery that he normally undertook on his overseas selling. I was very tempted to contact his employer, but I didn't. God knows what he was like to work with.
My other problem was that I got friendly with all of the tutors and, when one of them asked me for a reference for the job as a lecturer at the OBS, I gladly gave it. Unfortunately, the ultimate problem was he turned out to be Tony Stapleton; who was later on to be my deadly enemy, who did much to undermine my career – and ultimately to force me out of the OU!
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