Institute of Counselling Reviews

The course content was enriching and provided me with relevant skills to learn to be a counsellor. The assignments and the self-assessment exercises provided opportunities to think through counselling practices and to role play them with a colleague; that was instructive.

I enjoyed this course but will admit to finding some of it a little too on the "church/pastoral" side for my liking. I am an atheist so some of the course material didn't sit well with me but I managed to discern what was required of me by using those particular lesson models.

I found the reference material well written and easy to understand. the content was well structured and sectioned enough to allow me to break down what was needed in the essay and the case study.

The content itself was excellent - a broad range of theories, well explained in manageable chunks. Reading list and references provided were helpful for further learning. The exercises relating to each theory were helpful in consolidating the learning and applying theory to practice. Having lessons broken down in to separate documents was also useful. One suggestion I'd make for refinement is guidance in relation to the TMA - between the student handbook and the assignment booklet, there are three separate guides on structuring the TA. I found this a bit overwhelming and confusing, not sure which to align with. Could a single, definitive guide be implemented? Being dyspraxic, getting to grips with all the supporting information was a bit overwhelming for me. Can I suggest a dyslexia-friendly formatted version of materials, or at least to have the ability to copy and paste from the PDFs supplied so neurodiverse learners can adapt the font, layout and style of the document to suit my learning needs? All in all, though, I enjoyed the course, found it very useful and am now considering the PGCert. at UWS. This course gave me the opportunity to re-engage with academic learning, so my confidence in my ability to study has returned. I deeply appreciate being able to pay the course fees over a few months - this was an enormous help. Many thanks.

Excellent and relevant content and material, with lots of cross referencing.

Comment as above. Enjoyed the use of limited numbers of texts - this meant I could read them and extend away from them at my own instigation.

I have only completed Module 1. It was detailed and I enjoyed studying. As mentioned above it would be great to have more access to resources. That being said plenty of links were provided and the course was well structured.

Course content was very detail with good links to external reading.

The course was very interesting and the cases were very different from each other which kept me on my toes and focused. It was difficult at times to ask clients questions when there was no-one to actually answer them so you were having to imagine what the outcome would be to move forward with your next question. Ultimately I enjoyed the course and I will be able to use my new skills in my job role in Bereavement Services at the Crematorium.

I have really enjoyed the course. The materials are well put together and very clear. The content is displayed in a very attractive way which encourages learning.