Academy Class Reviews

I waited 45 minutes before the class started this may have been prevented if IT had set up the link before 9am instead of leaving it so late. I found the split of people working remotely and in class difficult. The tutors attention is then divided. You then have twice the amount of technical issues which really slow down the learning process. I did a 2 day photoshop class in London last year which was better as there was no remote students. A lot of people didn't have after effects on there macs/PCs. It would have been handy to have this stated beforehand.

TO MUCH TO LEARN IN A SHORT TIME

Although the course covered what was expected, I was disappointed to find out that there were no supporting documents, take away materials or even training materials to support the learning throughout the course, especially being a begineers course. All I had to take away was my own notes. Having attended courses elsewhere, I've always been provided with take away. So I found that slightly disappointing given the cost of the course. The website is also quite misleading where it states certification is provided. I had assumed this was Adobe certification. My trainer was completely unaware of any form of certification. I must comment on Ben the trainer though. Very friendly, knowledgable and willing to help whenever needed.

I was a virtual student 2 days out of the 3 day course. The virtual technology was not good. There was always a time lag on the occasions when I needed to speak remotely to the instructor via 'GoToMy Training' which made conversations very tricky. But the most annoying part was so many times my computer which was logged on using GoToMyPc to use the programme froze more times than I could count. This also meant that the instructor could not see me carrying out the task therefore my learning was not properly monitored and I did not get the feedback I needed. So it was incredibly frustrating as I wasted so much time looking at a frozen screen. Day 3 in the class room was absolutely fine, no problems at all.

There were no materials, only demonstrations and sharing screens through the students which was helpful but I shared the need of support materials with the instructor.

We didn't finish all the subjects and I was under the impression we would get into more technical details, however on the last day he changed his mind and told us he rather have some one with more technical knowledge teach us virtually at a later time, bit of a disappointment. We also spent 2 hours setting up a piece of software we only actually used for 5 minutes (3dsmax), a bit of a waste; Could've just shown us instead.

Geddy is very knowledgeable and the course covers a great deal. I think you need to have a background in Illustrator to keep up with all the activities and have additional time to practice allocated. It would be easier to follow in face to face environment too.

One of the key objectives is to leave you feeling confident ahead of the exam and I cant say that I do. The exam prep section seemed to create as many questions as it did provide answers and some of the content we hadn't discussed. The instructor moved through the green-belt course too quickly and at times it was really hard work to try and keep up. We spent long periods going into detail about areas that were of lesser importance to the group which reduced the amount of time available for more practical exercises. There seemed to be a reluctance to 'finish the job' and at 4.30pm on the dot every day we would finish, regardless of progress.

We were told this course would be three days, then when we arrived, myself and other members of the course were information it was only two days. Therefore we missed out on a day of valuable teaching and no explanation was given as to why.

The course seemed to drag slightly, focusing on some things that weren't important. For the first morning we spent the first few hours talking about pixels and nothing actually about Photoshop which seemed unnecessary for the amount of time taken, we could have got on with practical tasks and learnt a lot quicker. The teacher could have been more prepared for the second day, we ran out of things to do towards the end and given that this is only a starter class there should be much more we could have learnt. The teacher seemed to really know what he was talking about but didn't explain things that well as he showed us what to do. He also could have been more enthusiastic about what he was teaching as it was quite awkward at times.