ElfNet.org

I’m currently working my an Open University course.  Recently after submitting an assignment I was disappointed to see I’d lost some marks due to formatting.

The online systems that the Open University have mean that only Microsoft Word .doc or .rtf files are accepted for this type of upload even though the systems in place allow uploads of any format.   Taking a quick look at the forums a lot of tutors are having problems with reading students data who have uploaded their assignments in .docx.

Microsoft introduced their propriety docx (Office Open XML) in 2007 and it is the default file format used when saving a document.  Do the Open University struggle to use a four year old format or disallow it to save them purchasing modern software?

Being a Linux fanboi does come at a cost.  I generally use either Abiword or Open Office for my word processing needs, depending on what document I’m needing to write and how I intend on transporting it.  Both of these applications support saving documents in .doc format although when including images, tables and generally complex layout in the document, formatting can often be lost.

This bring me to my point, with the existing of formats such as the Open Document Format (ODF), why are students forced to use closed formats?  This seems crazy, especially when marking is based on document formatting which can be different depending on how it’s interpreted by your word processing software.

Hopefully they’ll get their systems sorted out soon and start investing in upgrading their web based systems which fail in multiple ways.