University of South Australia (UNISA)

I live in Brisbane, QLD - I have studied at Queensland Uni of Tech & Endeavour University. Decided to transfer units to online study for University of South australia. I think i made a mistake. I have just 1 year left, so i have to stay. I am thinking now i should've stuck with QUT and just went part time, but that would've taken me forever to finish. But for the love of god, do your research - DON'T believe it when they say they're going to support you. They make out like they give you all the support in the world - but you get NONE. You don't get slides, tutorials, lecture recordings or much of any 'teaching', you get youtube videos, links to articles and documents that OTHER people have done. I have gotten some 'lecture recordings' but it's not consistent and they go on a bit. When you are given a reading they don't give you context as to what it is you're looking for. So you end up reading a whole chapter not really understanding the basic theory, because there are no slideds!!! With assessments, the instructions are all over the place, so you have to click on multiple pages to get all the information together. You have all these little pointless portfolio sometimes, you can end up with 7 assessments, but one of them being a big essay...whatever happended to just having 2-3? With the assessment im on now, even the teachers have NO CLUE what it is saying to the point where they've said to us as an excuse "this is the first time the unit is running and we didn't make the assessment". It's really reassuring when your own lecturer can't interpret the essay instructions properly, and we've been asking for clarification constantly for 2 weeks. It's now 1 week before the due date for a 2500 word essay and i have resorted to emailing someone high up because I am worried my questions won't get answered and i will get delayed. There are others in the class that feels this way...i am pretty certain to just avoid studying online with unisa, as this is a common theme and im finding i have to teach myself so much more than i ever had to do. I should've gone with another university to do my studies.

NO. I do not recommend this university whatsoever, in any universe. I was stupid enough to think that studying online here would be awesome - im doing bach. of community health - first time this degree was run. I am used to structure, disclosure and support. There is NO structure, NO disclosure, NO support. They say there's flexibility etc with online, there isn't. You are given a bunch of youtube videos and readings in place of actual lectures, and when you ask questions, you are told to go back and read the readings. No powerpoints, no evidence of the actual theory that they've created themselves. 1/2 the time i skipped weeks because it was things i already knew in terms of repeated information or it was just so damn droll to read. Nothing is made interesting or even engaging. I remember for one of the assessments i had to challenge the actual structure of it because the content wasn't even being taught. The excuse was the person who wrote the unit isn't working there anymore, so it was assumed it was all good. Don't they review these things? Don't they try do actually perform their own assessments? There are only one or two lecturers who made the content interesting. I wonder if I've learnt that much in my degree. I'm finishing this year, and wondering if i need to do more study because i learnt so little. All i learnt is how to 'get by' because you get minimal instruction, almost an expectation that you are supposed to understand everything that is written and there's almost this culture that if you ask questions, you must be dumb. I've been to QUT, Endeavour University of Natural Health, even TAFE has better instructions that Unisa....i transferred to unisa because it was fully online, and it was getting hard to commit to work and attend on campus at my previous uni - they'll make excuses that its their first time run with the degree and they will improve next year, but tell that to my $30k+ university debt. This year i will be saying done and good bye.