Reed Learning Reviews

I have been extremely disappointed with my experience with my Foundation HR Course. I paid £1890 for the course, with the first payment made on 21/2/22. on then started with Watson Martin on the 2/3/22. I was assigned to Leanne Bucknor. She was lovely, we had a couple fabulous chats on zoom for Module 1 and Module 2 and it was a great start. Reed Learning then took over. I submitted my first draft for Module 3 in September of 2022. Unfortunately the 2021 versions of assignments (which I downloaded at the start of working on Module 3) were no longer available to submit so then had to make changes to the content. I resubmitted in November 2022. In January 2023 I submitted Module 4 and was only then found out my consultant changed. I was unaware of this as likely the email went into junk. My new Consultant Davina, has not been well this year I understand, so appreciate things got held up. However I submitted Module 3 (again, as it obviously hadn't been submitted for verification and was now required in a different format) and Module 4 in February 2023. Finally in August (6 months later) I heard that I passed. This course has taken far longer to complete than it should have, taking away the satisfaction of completion that I should feel.

I did this course thinking it would be an enjoyable learning experience with a wide range of support available. Little did I know that you are simply given a 100 page study guide for each unit and told to crack on without any support. No webinars, no training, no student collaboration and no coaching. The VLE wasn’t interactive or visual. It was just full of resources that had been pulled from google which anyone could access. I should have used a different provider who offers a better learning experience for their students to get better value for money.

this is the last of my core modules and I feel that there is a real change in this one - I experienced this at the start of my course where a Level 7 tutor stepped in for the afternoon and the change from Level 5 to 7 is so noticeable, and problematic. Whilst the lecturer clearly had a wealth of knowledge and we covered a lot - I don't feel particularly well directed in how to answer the questions. referring to the candidate guidance is a much more directed way of working & there was no mention of this in the session. Likewise, not using Jam boards means I have nothing tangible to take away from the learning points that weren't from my breakout groups - in this case, whole topic points. there were some people on the day today that this is their first module - I would be totally lost and petrified if I were them & its because we've been delivered the topic at Level 7 expectations. I have no real contact with my tutor so I can only hope they do and they can get guidance on things such as not spending massive amounts of word count on 'Explain' questions - despite spending tons of time in session today on those points.

I think far too much time was spent at the beginning of the session with introductions and going through basic exam preparation e.g. what analysing and evaluation means. We only completed one Learning outcome before lunch so the afternoon session felt very rushed and we did not go into detail of the last learning outcomes. I think it was useful to look at the past questions but we were not guided to other resources on where to actually find the information and research to answer the questions fully, it was assumed that we would know all this from being HR practitioners which is not the case.

The course relies on self education, making the payment for the course highly questionable. Outdated online content, no interactive course materials, such as video content or audio recordings and 'handbooks' that are riddled with notes and feedback from tutors, presumably as these are the works of previous students. Overall, I'm disappointed that I was left completely to my own devices.

I hadn't realised that there wasn't a taught element to the course. I knew it was online, self directed learning but I thought there may be a couple of taught sessions/videos to watch per learning outcome. It did come as quite a shock that all that was really provided was a recommended reading list and some links to articles/blogs to read. Similarly, only two of the selected learning outcomes had workbooks to guide learning. My advisor/coach was available when I needed a steer on which direction to take so please don't take the 1 star review as any reflection on him. I would have given the trainer category 0 as there wasn't a trainer.

The day was quite jumbled and the pace wasn't great. We took 3 hours to get through 11 slides and then a few minutes to get through the last 10 slides. I appreciate that the trainer had personal circumstances occurring and this may have affected her delivery. I felt that I did not learn much and it wasn't truly beneficial

The delivery was not clear. The pace was not consistent. The material would have been sufficient alongside clear and informed delivery, but unfortunately the latter was missing. The leader of the session could have been more informed about certain issues and more prepared to answer questions.

Raced through second half of session, felt questions that were asked were not answered, felt we were not told to the extent of detail we needed for our session plan

There were no course materials provided at all. There were no learning sessions on the VLE. Effectively I paid for someone to give me a subject around which I had to write and then they marked that work. I feel there should be more material as there is with other flexible providers especially with the amount paid! I do not feel that Watson Martin overly helped me gain my qualification. Whilst I appreciate level 7 is self study there were no boundaries or recommended reading.