Why do an online professional short course? | with the University of Essex Online

This week, we're joined by deputy academic director Claire Ketnor from the University of Essex Online to explore their short professional courses - flexible, part-time learning designed to fit around your life. Whether you want to upskill, try out a new subject or learn something new, these courses make it possible

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
• Claire Ketnor - deputy academic director, University of Essex Online

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts, Prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade, and in this episode, I speak to Claire Ketnor from the University of Essex Online about the short professional courses available.

Claire Ketnor: OK, my name's Claire Ketnor. I'm the deputy academic director for Kaplan Open Learning. And. And that's for the University of Essex Online courses. So I've been with the University of Essex Online for about three months now, and we delivered the University of Essex Online courses. There's a variety of online, undergrad and postgraduate and professional courses that we deliver. At the heart of everything we do is driven by making education more accessible to people. 

Emily Slade: Perfect. That's brilliant. So we are here today to talk about the online professional courses. So, are you able to begin by describing what they are in essence? 

Claire Ketnor: Yes. So the online professional courses are standalone qualifications and they. Particularly good for professional development, although people do take them for a variety of reasons and so they are online courses. They're part time, which is really good for fitting in the study around all the commitments, and they take place over 13 weeks and as a result on passing that course. The student would get 20 academic credits at postgraduate level, so they'll be awarded a recognised qualification by the University of Essex and all of our courses are designed for online delivery. So that's it in a nutshell.

Emily Slade: Yeah. Brilliant. So, do you offer a variety of subjects? 

Claire Ketnor: Yeah, absolutely. So we've got courses such as business computing, criminology, education, health law, psychology, and so some particular examples business and things like financial decision making. Diversity management, data management, management of projects, statistics, business, project management techniques. There's all sorts of bits and pieces and there. Computing things like big data, machine learning, numerical analysis. Programming and understanding that artificial intelligence, there's again lots of different courses there, criminology, so things like criminal victimisation, practical psychology for policing. You can kind of see some obvious links with with jobs here, some education courses. So things like delivering effective teaching and learning health courses. We've got quite a few there, so things like healthcare, leadership and then things like disease control, infection prevention and quality improvement. Manageable various management ones there and mental health over the life course meeting the needs of vulnerable patients. Lots of really interesting topics. So we've got some law ones there as well. So things like international business, law, psychology. So things like human development over the lifespan. People management, psychological assessment at work, so lots of courses that are obviously really kind of good for that professional development. Yeah, definitely. Who would suit a course like this? OK, so there are lots of different reasons why students are taking the professional courses with us. So one reason is to upskill. So as I said, they're very useful for the professional development side of things. So building those new skills and knowledge and another reason is to gain entry onto a postgraduate course with us, that's another reason why. Someone might take one of the courses with us and then also just a general interest in the subject and the one that keeps catching my eyes applied to forensic psychology and it's nowhere near my area of expertise. But it's something that I keep kind of noticing and thinking of that sounds really interesting. So in terms of entry qualifications. There's no kind of qualification requirements or experience necessary apart from having English to a certain standard, so it's possible. So even though these are kind of postgraduate-level courses. It's it's possible to do them without under undergraduate experience before and support can be accessed through our study Skills team who can support with academic writing and referencing, and so it isn't just for people who've done an undergraduate degree before and people can come straight in at at this level, which is, which is really nice. Actually. 

Emily Slade: Yeah, that's amazing. That's really, really good. So they really are open to everyone, and I suppose they're they're also appropriate for anyone worried about the high cost of fees for a full time degree, cost of living to move to a university that sort of. 

Claire Ketnor: Thing. Yeah, absolutely. So these courses are very much standalone. You can sign up to just one of them. So it's kind of not, there's a few different advantages to that and so around kind of just doing the one course and taking that qualification. No way. And as I said, some do. Some students do like to kind of test the waters before they go on to a full postgraduate course or they're doing it to get onto the postgraduate course. So we find that some carry on and do say PG CERT or PG dip or full Masters. That module that they did originally, so their original kind of professional course that they did and is actually part of that, that programme, then their credits would go towards that and we do have some students that decide to do one module as a professional course and then decide to do a completely different area. The credit in that case can't count towards that new kind of area, but generally there's mostly no further requirements to carry on with those full qualifications. There's a few exemptions to that. So for example, in nursing to study MSC nursing, someone would need to be licenced for clinical practise, but generally. Once you've done and passed one of these professional courses, that kind of gives you the ability to go on and do further study with us at postgraduate level. 

Emily Slade: Brilliant. That's amazing. So let's talk a bit about the structure of the programme. What does it look like?

Claire Ketnor: As I said, there was this 13 weeks course and that includes a one week induction and so that's to help students prepare for that online study. And so it's all done completely online. And as I've mentioned already it is part time, so most of it is around can be done around kind of other commitments. So in terms of. Of kind of how it works, there's online tutorials and support from tutors and we've got a really innovative learning platform with those innovative resources and and that's all always available. The assessments through assignments only. And so things like discussion forums, written assessments and journal entries are all. Possible kind of assessment and tasks. So as I said, very much a a standalone course where you've got 13 weeks of doing the work and then the the assessment there as well. 

Emily Slade: Brilliant. Is there anything else that you'd like to? 

Claire Ketnor: Add. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that the support that's available and I've only been. With Kaplan open learning for about 3 months. Now and one thing that's really impressed me is around the support that's actually available for students. So that's both from student advisors and also from the tutors themselves. So that's something that's really impressive and that we're quite proud of actually. So yeah, there's something to know. Definitely, is that in terms of resources.

Emily Slade: To help with lectures or like personal support?

Claire Ketnor: I think it's a combination of the two actually. And so the actual kind of material. Online so that they the materials online have very much are developed entirely for online provision. So it's they're built with that in mind. And then also the the support that goes with it from the tutor. So it's a combination of the two. 

Emily Slade: Perfect. If people want to reach out to you with questions or if they want to find more information, where can they?

Claire Ketnor: Okay, good question. So there's a lot of information on our website. So in terms of kind of where to go, I suppose just kind of Googling University of Essex Online, but the the actual link is online.essex.ac.uk and on that kind of front page, there is a section on the online professional courses. And the option to click on that and it will take you to another kind of page that allows you to then browse courses by subject. So it's a really useful website. To give you information, there's student testimonials on there and then from that there is a button towards the bottom of the page in order to contact somebody there. So there's then a page that's got all the contact details for the admissions team. So both they've got a phone number, they've got an e-mail address and then they've got a WhatsApp number as well. And then there's also details of how to contact the student support team. So there's a telephone number and an e-mail address there as well. And then there's a a form for some general inquiries as well. So there's a few different ways for for someone to to reach out to us. 

Emily Slade: Brilliant. That's all fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time. Today, thank you.

Claire Ketnor: Thank you.

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Claire for her time. For more information on the course, check out the show notes below. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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• Introducing online professional courses.
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