Welsh Journals

Review Article- The 'New' Geography from the O.U. RICHARD H. MORGAN Lecturer in Social Policy, University College of Swansea Introduction 1977 saw the emergence for the first time of a full-credit Open University course in Human Geography. The intention in this paper is to offer a review of this development, but it is a review which con- fines its attention to the first three units (from 30 units in total) of correspondence teaching (ISBN 0 335 07200 3). It is possible, how- ever, to offer some evaluation of the full course since the first three units serve very much as introductory units for the course as\a whole. In addition, these three units were looked at in a context set by the Course Guide, which reviews the overall structure of the course. Other teaching materials-by now familiar to the student of the Open University­×were also examined as integral parts of the intro- ductory units. These included the broadcast handbook, the supple- mentary material pertaining to assignments and offprints (Appleyard, 1970; Harding and Parker, 1974; Sonnenfeld, 1972), and the publication prepared by Paul Smith on 'The use of libraries and the literature of Human Geography' (ISBN 0 335 07208 9). The new course The 30 units of correspondence teaching are divided into three major sections as follows: Section I Man and Environment Unit 1 Understanding environments Philip Sarre Unit 2 Approaches to the study of man and environment Rees Pryce Unit 3 The geographer as mapmaker Alan Hodgkiss Units 4-6 I Man's impact on the environment John Blunden II Resource exploitation John Blunden Unit 7 Population growth and the environment Stephanie Goodenough Unit 8 Man-environment relationships as complex ecosystems Andrew Learmonth and Ian Simmons