Thursday, May 17, 2007 , late at night

Penn Foster: Live classrooms are a pain in the butt

You all know I’m enrolled at Penn Foster in the vet tech program.  I try to write regular blog updates about the experience, because I get a lot of emails from folks who are considering enrolling and want to know what it’s like.  I’ll tell you what it’s like right now… it’s frustrating!  I’m required to attend at least two hours of online “classroom” (chatroom) time for each month I’m enrolled, which seems reasonable.  There are two, two-hour classroom sessions scheduled each week, so it’s theoretically easy to fulfill the two-hour attendance requirement.  Unfortunately for me, the time I’m spending in the classroom isn’t being recorded/credited by the system, so I’m now stuck, unable to progress through more courses.  My records apparently show I haven’t been attending my required online sessions, even though I have.  Flippy has seen me attend these classes.  Flippy has seen me miss watching hockey games because I’m forcing myself to sit in front of the computer, in class.  I record all the days I’ve attended on my desktop calendar, and according to my records, I’ve attended nine hours of class (out of a required eight).  The director of the vet tech program tells me that her records show I’ve attended four hours, and none since March.  It makes no sense—I was in class on May 6th, and can recite the entire lesson taught, yet I’m not being credited for it because “the logs don’t show (me)”.  I’ve asked the program head if I could take screen shots of the classroom, and she told me that “A screen shot is not evidence of attendance at a two hour class”.  I asked if I could have the instructor note my attendance, and she said, “Instructors do not and will not record individual student attendance”.  So gee, what on earth am I supposed to do?  The program head is snotty and condescending—prospective students please note that as I’ve mentioned in other blog entries, Penn Foster is not the school to be attending if you have a problem of any sort.  Your emails will go unanswered, and in the long run you are nothing but a number with a bank account.  The vet tech program head had the nerve to pull on me the old standby, “There are thousands of students enrolled and you’re the only one having problems.” Yes, because I’m a moron who doesn’t know how to use a chatroom or read instructions, obviously.  I’m sure she hasn’t bothered to stop and consider that maybe I’m the only person who’s noticed a problem.  With each month that passes, the problem multiplies—the school refuses to send me more study materials until I’m caught up on classes, and two more hours of required chatroom time are tacked on for each month it takes me to complete the course.  You see the mathematical problem which presents itself.

I don’t know if I’ll ever finish this program now because I’ve been stumped by technology.  The saddest part of the situation is that the online classroom is nothing more than “busywork”—it’s about fifteen minutes of information and an hour and forty-five minutes of the instructor typing.  The last class was about the metric system (not that I’m supposed to know that, as I guess I wasn’t there), and it’s terribly redundant to a Canadian.  A Canadian being forced to skip a hockey game to sit there, and who then didn’t even get credit for it.  I’ll give it another week since stirring up shit and then I suppose I’ll just “unenroll” from the program, because there’s no reason to continue.  I’m quite sure that as soon as I threaten to shut off the money fountain, someone at the school will sit up and pay attention.

In the meantime, I’ve enrolled (and been accepted) at St. Petersburg College in Florida.  They have an acclaimed online vet tech program (and it doesn’t have a chatroom requirement!), and going into that program would make me eligible for financial aid (it’s very expensive, if only because I’m a non-resident), and all my classes would be transferable to other colleges if I ever wanted to try for a higher degree. 

One final word to Penn Foster for this evening:  Getting an education shouldn’t be this difficult.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 05/17 at 11:02 PM
Vet Tech school • (2) Comments • Permalink
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