Traditional Further Education Colleges and Universities schedule their courses around the academic year which starts around September. However, developing yourself often can’t wait that long and you need to find a course that is available when you want it. Courses need to be flexible enough to fit around your life and work. Because of that there should really only needs to be two milestones. When do you need to apply to be assessed and when do you need to submit your assessment? Anything else just isn’t customer friendly.
Fortunately, Professional Bodies recognise that, and course providers therefore can build flexible programmes.
At Professional Academy, only the CIM courses have set assessment entry date and submission date deadlines and there are three of them per year. All the other courses we offer allow for submission of your assignment 365 days a year. We mark and internally verify them continuously throughout the year thus taking away any inhibitors to the pace you want to learn at. It is simply up to you, you can go as fast or as slow as you want.
Workshops are scheduled so that there is always one coming up in the near future at one of our study centres to suit even the most motivated learner and as there is no set order in which you need to take the modules/units you can feel confident that you can meet even the tightest of schedules.
But what if you need to slow down? That is no problem as well. All you need to do is unbook yourself from a workshop and attend a later one that will be available in your location. The online course is still available if you want to keep your hand in and when you want to pick the course up again your support tutor is there ready to help you.
We are often asked how long will the course take and how many hours do I need to set aside to study? This is a hard question to answer as it depends on the type of learner you are and whether you are attending workshops or studying remotely. Some learners prefer to read as much material as they can before they attempt an assignment, whereas others will read and work on their assignment at the same time. Some learners like to craft and hone every detail of the assignment before submission of their draft to their support tutor, others prefer to get it “nearly right” and wait for feedback before final completion. Of course, one way of getting up the “Learning Curve” as quick as possible is to attend the workshops where you are given all the tips and guidance by the expert tutor.
Whatever your learning style you should plan for about 30-45 hours of study per module as a minimum and decide how you would like to schedule this weekly. Three to five hours a week is a comfortable pace. Don’t forget, a two-day workshop counts as 15 hours of this time!