Open Polytechnic

I have done a lot of training and have to say Open Polytech is the MOST difficult, confusing, frustrating nonsensical system I've ever come across. Great that the service is there but REALLY difficult to get your head around how it operates ... it's not something you can just start learning your own course on .... you need to figure out how they work first and that's problematic coz its not sensible.
Mar 23rd, 2023

Just a few courses left to complete my Diploma in Construction (quantity surveying). It's impossible to fail because you get a second chance to resubmit assignments if your score is below 50%. Staffs are awesome and the online library grants you access to scholarly papers in all fields across the globe, not just your chosen program. Loads of freebie computer software (including MS office) + student card that gets you discount for pizza etc. Only drawback is that you can't go partying with other students so it feels a bit lonely studying on your own
Jan 27th, 2023

Nov 18th, 2022

For someone in my work and financial situation, OP is the only option for me to study, and that is a shame. Within my programme, there is no teaching involved but rather a series of readings, activities that are not graded and often not even commented upon, and then a few assessments/papers. The reading material is interesting and the platform well-organised, so I justify the money I give to OP for their role as a curator/organiser of significant readings that others have written but not much more. If my employer wasnt funding my diploma, I would not continue on. I know from experience that online learning can be so much more than this, so it isnt like OP cant do better. There are tutors but they dont do anything except post canned commentary at intervals throughout the term. Theres also an external grader (why they need that many people guiding courses where theres no interaction is beyond me). I do well on my assignments but always get points deducted because the grader would like more development even though I am at or over the word limit - they deduct points when you go too far over the limit. I tried to address this Kafkaesque dilemma with a tutor once but got nowhere. They acknowledged that my point is valid but no change in practice. I feel like a bit of a jerk for continuing on with this qualification. I know Im good at the work I do, so why do I need to prove it with a graduate diploma? I guess thats my question to figure out, but seriously, the Open Polytechnic just isn't that good.
Sep 2nd, 2022

I will try to be objective about this college, although the overall impression: it's not worth your time and money. I've just finished studying Web development course here and here's my experience pros and cons: Pros: - Overall easy to enroll and start studying online. The whole course is fully online and can be taken anywhere. There are no exams (at least in my course), instead there are three assignment works for each paper. - Definitely hard to fail. You get 2 automatic extensions for each assignment. If your mark is below 50% you get a chance to redo. Assignment task is 90% covered by the course material. Cons: - Course materials are just plain text readings. You just have to read and read and read. - The material is mostly brief. If you really wand to get in depth of the subject then you have to google most of it. - Surprisingly lots of mistakes in the course materials. It seems that at some point the material was ok, but then it was updated and wasn't proof-read after updating. Some parts don't match together, mistakes make it impossible to understand. Even if you point out the mistake to the tutor it may take weeks to correct and obviously its no longer valuable to you. For the programming course it was crucial that code didn't work because of the mistakes in the course materials or even parts of it missing. - And the biggest con of all: lack of support! You are just left on your own with the course material readings. If you don't understand something, theoretically there is and option to ask the tutor, but the reply takes from a few days to a week. The reply sometimes is not valuable because the tutor may not have understood the essence of your question. It's difficult to ask something about the code that doesn't work if you can't show this code. They say the biggest support instrument is the students' community. Ok, each course paper has a message board. The message board is a list of topics. Each topic is open in a new window and then each reply message is open in a new window and then to go back and view another message you have to navigate back to the previous window, wait for it to load up and click to go to the next message. Image how easy it is to browse replies to find an answer. Also there is no search function in the message board section so you have to click on each post to see the content. The topic header can be far from its content, so just open and open again. Oh, and there is no option to right-click and open a topic in a new window, it wont let you. Have to open each topic and then navigate back, then scroll down to where you were and open the next topic. Terrible, aye!? Maybe that's why student rarely use the message board when looking for help. Also when you're an IT student and code doesn't work you have the need to show your code to someone to browse through. The is no option to copy parts of your code to the message board topic. If would be copied as plain text in one line. So imagine when you're doing a task or an assignment you encounter a problem and there's just nobody to help you apart from google. And when you get your assignment marked and returned to you, if there's an error, you get marked down, but there's no solution given. Often the work you've done for one assignment is later used in the next assignment and so your mistake carries over. Summary: I've done two courses here: IT lvl5 certificate and diploma in Web development. I graduated, but I don't know most of the course material because I had nobody to ask when I was stuck and then it carried over and over. Because of the amount of mistakes in the course material and lack of human support I would recommend you to go elsewhere for your qualification options.
Feb 8th, 2023