Open Colleges
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Not recommended - poor support, inconsistent
I would not recommend studying with this organisation. Student support is virtually nonexistent. The course I completed required placement and it took me over a year to secure somewhere to do this. I asked for help from OC as was one of the attractive features of the course and it resulted in nothing. Ultimately, I just had to keep applying on my own until I found a place which had availability to allow me to complete placement. Because of this delay, I was then told that I would not be able to complete my course (as no more extensions would be provided) and so I would receive a statement of attainment for what I had completed to date. This isn't entirely OCs issue, I had some health problems which made completion of placement impossible for around 6 months. I take ownership of that as something which is totally on me. Course materials were often outdated and assessment material was poorly written or worded, making it difficult to determine exactly what the assessors were looking for you to demonstrate. Turnaround time on assessments and exams also left a lot to be desired. It would often take several weeks for results to be returned. This also meant you often got stuck waiting for your next module to be released. Feedback from assessors was also incredibly inconsistent. I was told on one exam that I was providing too much information, and then marked down on the next one for not providing enough detail. This happened repeatedly and when I asked about why the feedback on my exams was so vastly different in terms of what was actually required I didn't get a response. It was a really disappointing experience all round. It honestly just feels like as soon as they take your money, you don't matter in the slightest.