FdSc Arboriculture (On-line)

[chriscant97]

Hi everyone, im looking at doing the FdSc Arboriculture on-line degree through Myerscough college, and i want to find some things out about it before i decide to do it, and i know some of you guys have done the course.

 

-How long do you spend per day doing the work?

-How does the videoconferencing part of the course work? will i have to get a camera??

-And do employers value an online degree in the industry as much as a normall one?

 

Any help or tips would be much appriciated, Thanks!!

[_Andy]

Hi

 

I am in my third year of the FdSc online at Myerscough and I am really enjoying it. The reason I chose it was because it was far cheaper than going full time and I could continue to work.

 

I would say that you need to be quite self driven to do this course as obviously you do not have that personal sort of communication that you would have if you went to university.

 

Some of the tutors are really quick to respond to queries and on the ball with discussion boards and such whilst others proved very hard to get hold of.

 

I have not needed to buy a camera for a video call or anything like that apart from perhaps a compact camera for taking photos of trees. This year I have had to do a project proposal which involved a little bit of webcam use but nothing a phone could not handle.

 

The course content is very interesting and covers a wide range of subjects as you can see from the course fact sheet.

 

As for workload a couple of hours a week is not quite going to do it. At the moment I spend most of Saturday doing the work and most week nights.

 

I cannot answer about employability and would be interested to see what employers have to say about applicants with this qualification.

 

Hope this is useful to you, but it is just my opinion of the course.

 

Andy

[elspedo]

Hi,

 

I'm on the second year of the course and would agree with Andy you need to have a real desire to put the work in yourself, I probably spend ~16 hours a week on it at the moment so be prepared to lose half your weekend and most of your week nights too.

 

We've had trouble both last year and this year with the course not being updated but our assignments still need to be handed in on the same date (our last one we are missing 3 weeks of content but the submission was still last week).

 

I have also sent assignments to tutors to ask for guidance and had no reply which is fairly poor imo but others have responded with in 30 mins and have been really helpful. Not having that ability to just go and ask someone a question can be really frustrating if they don't respond to email though.

 

If you need to know anything more in-depth let me know!

[Sal]

Finished the FdSc earlier this year & to answer you questions:

 

-How long do you spend per day doing the work?

Same as Andy, a couple of hrs a night plus a good chunk of the weekend. I've just started another online course which I stay late after work to do so that I can make use of their extensive Arb library!

 

-How does the videoconferencing part of the course work? will i have to get a camera??

Didn't have to use video conferencing/webcam for our project proposal, just used Powerpoint with narration (may be a new feature of course?)

 

-And do employers value an online degree in the industry as much as a normall one? I've found that my employer/others I speak with are usually very positive about the amount of self-motivation you have to use to study this way. Shows that you can manage your own time/prioritise workloads etc.

 

The tutors can be very busy at times with multiple courses/years running at once, but emailing them directly and utilising the discussion boards as much as possible helps.

 

Hope this is useful

[chriscant97]

Thanks for the help everyone, got to give it a real think!

[Anno]

Just to add my two penneth agree with all so far,I am in the second year also and as well as a full time job,playing in a band and acquiring three grandchildren I have at least one full week night and a weekend day working,there is also lots of background reading to do and I have 30 years Eco/environmental knowledge to draw on...

Don't enter into it lightly,but when you do achieve you will have earned it!

[Anno]

Better get back to that assignment...