Pete from the Leeds centre really made the experience worthwhile, his practical experience was invaluable in helping understand some of the concepts and methods involved in working in telecoms and his method of teaching accommodates for a variety of learning styles. Learning from Pete has instilled confidence in myself to be able to work to a high standard in the industry.If you are very technically minded I'm sure you'd love this course if they just added more practical work into it. Working with the copper and fibre is fun and the installs are pretty engaging if you like doing things with your hands. If you're more of a theory person then oh boy you'd love this course. Weeks upon weeks of powerpoint slides await you.As for my experience with the assessments themselves, they use OneFile which has a pretty archaic way of turning in your work, requiring you to write in an evidence box that is extremely fiddly and prone to losing your work. It would be better if we were simply allowed to upload word documents that allow for embedded images that way you will never be at risk of losing your work and it is a much more user friendly way of writing up your assessments.A revision of the oral presentation assessment OP1 and the organisational effectiveness CS2 are desperately needed, OP1 containing a confusing lack of specification in its posed scenario compared to what the criteria is actually asking of you, leading to most of us just listing off the criteria to address the assessment and the CS2 one is very outdated, asking for information that doesn't exist at the time of writing along with it being completely irrelevant to telecoms in general.The last week of the course has been very sparse content wise with us just looking for jobs in class while awaiting our marks for the work. It would be much better if we were allowed to have the fibre tools out for the last week too, or just some kind of guided learning to break up the day.The tools and gear in the classroom could do with some renewal. I ran into a lot of problems using dodgy ports on the patch panels, tools that wouldn't function properly and even patch panels hanging loose or without the swinging bracket to open it, the loose panels themself being quite dangerous as you're walking around the cramped classroom. They will say it helps you as learning to do it under these conditions would make it easier when you get into the field, with shiny new tools however, as a new engineer starting out, your first system having more than one fault during an install and not having the theory behind testing and fault finding down at that point was very rough. It turned out to be both a broken patch panel and RJ45 outlet which could have been fixed if they just refreshed the gear every course or two. Overall, the course could do with a lot more practical work, mainly focussed around the fibre aspect as that is what most people will be applying to this course for as a pathway into careers with Virgin, Kelly's etc. My time at the course literally consisted of 1 week of fibre, not counting a couple safety and informative powerpoints the week before., with the tools out for maybe 3-4 days where we simply spliced fibres together or to pigtails. Another point is that there are no guaranteed interviews, so even though the course wont affect your universal credit should you be claiming it, they won't be very happy about it.They have people to help you with searching for jobs and cv's however the course would be so much better if there were better opportunities for employment at the end such as liaising with employers to come in at the end of the course or being able to provide interviews for high achievers. As it stands if you don't have a driving license at the end of the course your chances of employment in the telecoms industry are pretty grim, which might have been nice to know before joining.I'm glad I took the chance to experience the course overall as it has given me an interesting career path to follow that I hope to take up as soon as I can find a job in the industry, and I hope the negative aspects mentioned in this review don't reflect badly upon Pete as he was an amazing teacher, his experience and knowledge being invaluable to helping me understand some of the more complicated topics as he could relate it back to his practical experience working on the railway. The main glaring issues with this course lie in the assessments themselves and the state of the equipment we are given to learn on along with a lack of fibre practical.I would say if you're on the fence, go for it. You have nothing to lose by trying out the course and if you feel like it's not for you there's no obligation to stick around. I had a positive experience overall as I was able to learn new skills and had chances to apply the theory that we learned in the practical work.
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