TXR248 Experiencing Systems

This was a week long piss up, sorry residential course, which in 2004 was held at Nottingham University.

We were accommodated in the student halls and ate on campus, the food was excellent but I was seriously chastised for having the audacity to ask for a second sausage with my full English Breakfast! We had a full study program from 9.30 each morning till 5.30pm. Evening lectures are also arranged from 7.00pm till 9.00pm each night, although these were optional, I would well recommend them. Social events were run after 9.00pm by OUSA, which ranged from a sports night to a general knowledge quiz (which incidentally my team won, but the OUSA scorers obviously didn't take their degrees in maths, added the scores up incorrectly and gave our 1st prize to the team that actually came second! By the time we queried the result, the 1st prize had already been drunk!)

Oh yes, TXR248 is all about systems, more specifically the Hard Systems Methodology and the Soft Systems Methodology.

The course started with some team building work, followed by a recap of some system ideas, such as perspectives and diagramming.

We then looked at the two methodologies by undertaking a case study, for SSM we looked at the Camelford water poisoning incident in Cornwall in 1988, and for HSM we looked at a hospital A&E department.

The final part of the course was for our tutor group to prepare a presentation using either or both of the methods, again this was based on the problems of a (different) A&E department. Prior to the project part of the course we were supported in our studies by the course tutor, but for the project we were left pretty much to ourselves (the course is after all called Experiencing Systems, what better way to experience systems than by doing a project/presentation on our own?). The final morning of the course was spent delivering our presentation another groups tutor.

The course is assed via two TMA's, one completed before the residential week and one after. Our tutor also assessed our participation in the residential week together with our understanding of course concepts during the week, but our case studies/project work during the week was not formally marked.

See the links below for some of the diagrams we produced during the week:

Photos1

Photos2