Athabasca University : Computing and Info Systems Reviews

Anonymous (In Progress) on April 19, 2011 (email verified)

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Non-Directional and a Horrible Experience I do not recommend this program to a beginner programmer who is interested in learning programming, it is quite implausible. I am a graduate from George Brown with a diploma in electrical and mechanical engineering and thought I would step it up to a degree in the BSc CIS [PD] program at Athabasca. I was granted 60 block, however, I only finished two courses and now currently attending a 'REAL' university with 'REAL' teachers and a 'REAL' curriculum. Footnote - I asked a professor from York University if the 'COMP' curriculum I was taking was that of a normal IT program at York, He said it was at least 3 course in one! and YES, I needed that professor from York who was my 'REAL' tutor at an extra cost because of the lack of support I receiving.

Anonymous (In Progress) on April 2, 2011 (email verified)

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Athabasca - A blight on the landscape Athabasca University is a travesty. Its adminsitration is hidebound, sclerotic and beholden to unions (firmly) intellectually lodged in 1970. Its academic staff have little or no interest in the students. I have completed many courses there but have now transferred to a far superior online school - Excelsior College. I will graduate from Excelsior with one degree in August 2011 and another in June of 2012. I would urge anyone looking at Athabasca to consider finding a real school somewhere else. Athabasca credits are cheap for a reason - don't be afraid to pay for something better somewhere else. EXCELSIOR!

Jr (In Progress) on December 22, 2010 (email verified)

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What a joke Avoid at all costs. The materials are erroneous, the assignments dont relate to exams at all. The tutor quality varies greatly. Some of the tutors do not respond to emails/phone calls at all, the marking is widely inconsistent, everyone does things their own way.

Hawks_eye (In Progress) on August 25, 2010

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Money printing press I took both COMP501 and COMP503, two masters-level courses. Here are my experiences: There are no lectures. You're basically mailed a textbook and expected to read it and complete whatever work exists on your own. The discussion forums were useful in COMP501 where a mark was assigned for participation, but completely useless in COMP503. The professor in COMP503 provided one-line responses to my emails containing detailed questions. This is unacceptable when the professors provide no other contact with the students. The courses cost more than traditional in-class courses, yet there's close to no support whatsoever. If you need a piece of paper, maybe this program is worthwhile. But if you just want to learn the material, I'd suggest looking at the textbook list and doing it on your own.

Anonymous (In Progress) on December 12, 2009 (email verified)

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Unprofessional school I have found the course instructors to be overly resistant to updating course material. For example, I was doing an assignment and there was a blatant error in the instructions. It was in either COMP 272 or COMP 268, I can't remember which. Fine... someone made an error in the assignment, that's okay, we're all human. I went to the course's student forum to see what others had done about the error, only to find that students had been complaining about the error FOR YEARS. YEARS! All someone had to do was to make a little change to the content of a webpage. Instead every student in that time had to stumble over the same error. To me this is negligence. That's not the only time I experienced something like that either. I feel like they set up this course years ago and now they are just sitting back, letting the money roll in, and getting students in an out with as little work as possible. Most of the correspondence I had with the instructors was through e-mail, and I found that the instructors are ruder than they would perhaps be in person. I pay good money, about $700 per course, and I expect more than that. This school is unprofessional.

Anonymous (Graduate) on June 8, 2007 (email verified)

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Computing and Info Systems I just graduated from the Computing and Info systems bachelors degree and it was a very very challenging program. Overall I give this University 4.5 stars out of 5. This is a real university that is dedicated to online programs. I was challenged with the material and the course selection was great. I was encouraged to use the latest software in the assignments and certain courses like the semantic web including such concepts as RDF, XML etc were cutting edge. Overall a great value for the time and money.

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