It consists of a series of separate course-specific sessions running in parallel over a weekend, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. There are nine 1.5 hour revision sessions for each of a number of courses.

Courses covered
We hope to cover the following courses:

S216 Environmental Science
S279 Our Dynamic Planet: Earth and life
S282 Astronomy
SD329 The Science of the Senses
S330 Oceanography
S345 Chemical change and Environmental Applications
S366 Evolution
S369 Geological Record of Environmental Change
S377 Molecular and Cell Biology
S382 Astrophysics
S383 The Relativistic Universe
SK320 Infectious Disease and Public Health
SM358 The Quantum World
SMT359 Electromagnetism

There will be nine 1.5 hour revision sessions for each course we cover from that list.

We would also be prepared to cover other courses if there is sufficient demand from students, and provided we can find a tutor; contact us if you have a suggestion for a course and tutor.

Guest Lecture
Dr Mark Brandon (OU) will give a talk on the Saturday evening. (Title TBA)

Costs

The main tariffs are given below. Note that for students booking and paying a £50 deposit by
1 August 2012 (the "early bird deadline") there will be an Early Bird Discount of £25 off the basic prices. Students booking after 1 August must pay the full price. Note that prices have been "frozen" at last year's rates despite a small increase in the venue (Yarnfield)'s prices. If a revision course does not run, students will be refunded all monies paid to date including any deposit.

Early Bird Prices
Resident, single occupancy - £265 per person.
Resident, shared occupancy (couples - two students sharing double room) - £207 per person.
Resident, shared occupancy (couples - student and non-studying partner) - £352 altogether.
Non-resident (including Sat & Sun lunches and Sat evening meal) - £150 per person.
Non-resident (including Sat and Sun lunches and Fri and Sat evening meals) - £168 per person.
Non-resident (NO meals) - £100 per person.

Basic Prices (for bookings after August 1)
Resident, single occupancy - £290 per person.
Resident, shared occupancy (couples - two students sharing) - £232 per person.
Resident, shared occupancy (couples - student and non-studying partner) - £377 altogether.
Non-resident (including Sat & Sun lunches and Sat evening meal) - £175 per person.
Non-resident (including Sat and Sun lunches and Fri and Sat evening meals) - £193 per person.
Non-resident (NO meals) - £125 per person.

For students who need to bring a helper or carer, we have a limited number of places for resident helpers/carers at £120 per person.

Note that all rooms have one double bed. There are no twin rooms.

All rates are subject to full payment being received and cleared by us before 1st September 2012 (the "bookings deadline"). We are unable to hold places for students who are not fully paid up by that time. To keep these prices as low as possible, we do not accept card payments but will, like last year, be accepting cheque or electronic bank-to-bank transfers of payments.

Prices for additional night stays etc are detailed on the Booking Form when you log in. For other queries use the online messaging service on the Booking Form.

How to Book a Place
Our online booking system will be available from 1 April 2012 until 1 September 2012.

Register your details here. When authenticated click on the page, and, provided you agree to the Terms & Conditions, fill in the required information, send your deposit or full amount, preferably by electronic bank transfer, and when we receive and acknowledge it your place will be booked on the Weekend.

Terms and Conditions
Over the years we have had many requests from students for clarification of booking policies etc. We have now collated the results of these into one terms and conditions document, which we ask students to read and agree to before their booking can be processed. We appreciate that this may make us look like a commercial organisation (which we're not) but we believe it is in the best interests of both the organisers and the students to make these things clear. (And besides, they are not nearly as long as a typical set of commercial terms and conditions). Do read the terms and conditions before booking - you can download them any time by clicking here.

The Science Revision team takes great care to help ensure your personal data is secure. More details here.

Studying multiple courses?
The booking process requires a choice as to which is your prime choice of course to revise or prepare for at the weekend. If you are studying more than one course and wish to miss sessions in your prime choice and instead attend sessions for another course that is running that weekend, this may be possible by arrangement during the weekend. Please be aware that session content is sometimes altered to fit students' requirements during the first session, so planning which other course sessions to attend may be difficult ahead of time.

To move sessions you first need to obtain the consent of both your prime course tutor and the tutor for the sessions you wish to join during the weekend. You should also obtain any relevant course notes provided by the Tutor to ensure you can participate fully. There may be a small charge for these if additional copies need printing. During that process we also need to be mindful of regulations prohibiting exceeding room capacities. If consents are given, please also inform a member of the organising committee so that we know where you are in case of an emergency or fire evacuation.

When changing between courses, please at all times be mindful of any possible disruption to other students only studying the one course.

What you pay for
About 78% of the standard Weekend fee you pay us goes to the venue, and covers your accommodation and food, together with the hire of the teaching rooms and equipment. A further 18% goes towards the tutor's fee, accommodation, food and expenses. The remaining 4% pays for us to provide organisers at the event, and covers expenses such as photocopying, as well as covering all expenses required to keep the organisation going through the year and plan future Science Revision Weekends.

Future Revision Weekends
We are committed in the long run to continuing to provide a service as OU exams migrate from October to June. However, for various reasons we may not be able to run two events in any one year. We will be running an autumn revision Weekend in 2013 and are currently looking into the possibility of an additional event in May 2013 or 2014. We will definitely have migrated to May by 2015 and from that year onwards we will run only one annual event, in May. Do please bear with us while we try to sort out the details of the intervening period. We apologise to students who are looking for assistance with revision for courses examined in June 2012; you may find that there is a small "one-off" revision event, run by volunteers but not by us, for your course, as has already happened in previous years for S207, S283 and S339.

Who we are
The SRW is run by a small group of volunteers. It has no formal connection with the Open University or any other official body; it is informally supported by the OU, OUCS (the OU Chemistry Society) and Fusion (the OU Physics & Astronomy Society) but is entirely separate from all these bodies. We have a very small financial reserve, but no funding other than the fees students pay in order to attend the event.

In order to protect the volunteers from personal liability, the current organising committee have registered as a not-for-profit company to run the event, Science Revision Ltd, and have obtained charitable status.

It is hoped that our new charitable status will allow us to reduce the cost to students.