horrible experience with engl 255 course at athabasca

[wolf30]

So far this course has been a nightmare. I have taken close to a dozen online courses from ryerson, york, guelph-humber, humber and by far this course being offered online through athabasca is the most disorganized course I have ever taken. I only enrolled in this course after I read a post from someone here saying how it was such a bird course.

 

There isn't really a forum for you to discuss and ask questions. The forum is littered with old announcements dating back to 2010! I don't even see a single post from anyone in the course on the forum. Like seriously the people who run the english department really need to clean up their site. Their is no official university email and my TA doesn't even post any announcements or updates. They have some dumb rule where you need to register before the 10th date of the month to start the course the next month. This isn't an issue anywhere else.

 

To make matters worst, they changed the textbook edition but shipped me the old edition cause the new one hasn't been published yet. It gets quite confusing reading the student guide and not finding any of the stuff and then having to go online to the website and look for this new updated student guide and textbook pages. Likely seriously, if your textbook edition isn't ready yet, then don't use it and base all the readings and assignments on the new edition. What was the point of shipping me the old edition of the student guide and textbook if they aren't being used? Just makes things more confusing.

 

My TA who is according to athabasca is the course instructor takes forever to return assignments. I submitted a 2 paragraph self introduction assignment worth 0% last week and have yet to receive it back. They have some dumb rule where you need to wait to receive your assignment back before you can submit the new one. I can't sign up for my discussion group to start working on my next assignments cause my TA can't mark a 2 paragraph assignment worth no marks in a reasonable time. I also looked up my TA on ratemyprofessor.ca and he got like a 1.6 rating .

 

I keep reading contradicting information on the athabasca website and the student guide. I was led to believe I have 6 months to complete the course and can work at my own pace but it seems they have an established deadline for submitting course work which is based on a weekly basis. It would have been nice to know about this from the TA through either an annoucement or email but no, nothing from him. I'm currently taking another online course through york and the difference is night and day. The course instructor posts and emails annoucements out and lets us know deadlines well ahead of the due date. Here at athabasca it seems your pretty much on your own, not even some damn contact from the staff and faculty. Absolutely no help what so ever. I realize this may be an isolated incident with my TA and perhaps the other TA's are much better. I'm absolutely disgusted with how this course has been run.

 

Anyone else experience the same disappointment as me with this poorly run course?

[breana]

Can you please tell me what I should expect for English 255 final?

[futurepediatric]

So far this course has been a nightmare. I have taken close to a dozen online courses from ryerson, york, guelph-humber, humber and by far this course being offered online through athabasca is the most disorganized course I have ever taken. I only enrolled in this course after I read a post from someone here saying how it was such a bird course.

 

There isn't really a forum for you to discuss and ask questions. The forum is littered with old announcements dating back to 2010! I don't even see a single post from anyone in the course on the forum. Like seriously the people who run the english department really need to clean up their site. Their is no official university email and my TA doesn't even post any announcements or updates. They have some dumb rule where you need to register before the 10th date of the month to start the course the next month. This isn't an issue anywhere else.

 

To make matters worst, they changed the textbook edition but shipped me the old edition cause the new one hasn't been published yet. It gets quite confusing reading the student guide and not finding any of the stuff and then having to go online to the website and look for this new updated student guide and textbook pages. Likely seriously, if your textbook edition isn't ready yet, then don't use it and base all the readings and assignments on the new edition. What was the point of shipping me the old edition of the student guide and textbook if they aren't being used? Just makes things more confusing.

 

My TA who is according to athabasca is the course instructor takes forever to return assignments. I submitted a 2 paragraph self introduction assignment worth 0% last week and have yet to receive it back. They have some dumb rule where you need to wait to receive your assignment back before you can submit the new one. I can't sign up for my discussion group to start working on my next assignments cause my TA can't mark a 2 paragraph assignment worth no marks in a reasonable time. I also looked up my TA on ratemyprofessor.ca and he got like a 1.6 rating .

 

I keep reading contradicting information on the athabasca website and the student guide. I was led to believe I have 6 months to complete the course and can work at my own pace but it seems they have an established deadline for submitting course work which is based on a weekly basis. It would have been nice to know about this from the TA through either an annoucement or email but no, nothing from him. I'm currently taking another online course through york and the difference is night and day. The course instructor posts and emails annoucements out and lets us know deadlines well ahead of the due date. Here at athabasca it seems your pretty much on your own, not even some damn contact from the staff and faculty. Absolutely no help what so ever. I realize this may be an isolated incident with my TA and perhaps the other TA's are much better. I'm absolutely disgusted with how this course has been run.

 

Anyone else experience the same disappointment as me with this poorly run course?

 

I'm so sorry to hear that you've had such a bad experience. I have taken courses at Athabasca and would definitely not recommend them at all either unless it is an absolute last resort. Honestly, beyond the easy grades (at least for the courses I am in), the university is absolutely terrible, and there are similar opinions all over the internet and with other people I have asked from various different courses (which I found when I went to a testing centre where I met a lot of people taking various Athabasca courses). Some of the bad experiences I had were similar to yours. I had different people working at Athabasca tell me completely diff info (which resulted in my paying extra hundreds of dollars of fees), the tutor I had was absolutely terrible (i.e. did not respond at all for weeks, gave me incorrect info when I asked Qs) and the there are a lot of inconsistencies and incorrect info in the text. It was honestly a nightmare and I regret taking the course. The contradicting info I got from talking to various people working at Athabasca was especially annoying as it created a lot of problems for me.

[medhopeful64]

I'm so sorry to hear that you've had such a bad experience. I have taken courses at Athabasca and would definitely not recommend them at all either unless it is an absolute last resort. Honestly, beyond the easy grades (at least for the courses I am in), the university is absolutely terrible, and there are similar opinions all over the internet and with other people I have asked from various different courses (which I found when I went to a testing centre where I met a lot of people taking various Athabasca courses). Some of the bad experiences I had were similar to yours. I had different people working at Athabasca tell me completely diff info (which resulted in my paying extra hundreds of dollars of fees), the tutor I had was absolutely terrible (i.e. did not respond at all for weeks, gave me incorrect info when I asked Qs) and the there are a lot of inconsistencies and incorrect info in the text. It was honestly a nightmare and I regret taking the course. The contradicting info I got from talking to various people working at Athabasca was especially annoying as it created a lot of problems for me.

 

futureped, mind me asking what courses you took at Athabasca? I was thinking of taking orgo and an English course there...