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

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  1. I can vouch for you, that you’ve been logged into their useless chatroom.  Even *I* know what the stupid chats have been about, and I’m not taking the program.  How else would I know that some of the people in the room didn’t even know what the metric system was?  Ugh, I’m embarrassed for my fellow Americans.  Yeah, it’s tedious to switch, but holy crap, look at the company we’re keeping - “As of 2005 only three countries, the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar (Burma) had not mandated the metric system upon their populace.” Seriously, Burma and Liberia?  The Burmese have excellent food though - go to Nirvana in The Castro District of San Francisco.  It’s some of the best food I’ve ever eaten.  I want to go back to SF, just to eat at Nirvana.

    Oh yeah, back to the silly chatroom stuff for Penn Foster.  I’m glad now that I didn’t sign up for their marketing program.  I’d love to get a marketing degree, although when they sent me the information, it was not, in fact a marketing program.  It was a business program with a couple of marketing classes.  I probably would’ve ended up sending them thousands of dollars, only to have them tell me I wasn’t sitting in their useless chatroom, learning, um, nothing.  Maybe instead of being so snotty & condescending, the woman should’ve just looked at your test scores, figured out that you’re passing your classes there with flying colors, and just given you the benefit of the doubt.  Although, why they can’t figure out how to keep track of your attendance, when we could probably subpoena our ISP (or their ISP) to prove that you were logged in on the Penn Foster site, I don’t know.  I suppose it’s easier and cheaper to let everyone on the internet know that the director of the Penn Foster Vet Tech Program is rude, condescending, and just plain wrong.  Ugh, how many days since you started have I been sitting downstairs when you’ve had to run to your computer to make sure you were in that dumb “classroom”?

    Posted by Flippy  on  05/18  at  01:40 AM

  2. I’m sorry your online program has turned out to be so problematic--that really sucks that they won’t work with you to solve it. I bet you’re right--when you leave the program, they’ll be quite concerned. Too little, too late.

    Hopefully you’ll have better luck with the next program!

    Posted by Helena  on  05/18  at  07:57 AM
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