Disappointing So Far
Disappointing experience so far, but I will revise my review if things improve and the outcome is positive.
Online course have unique challenges, especially those found through Facebook and other social media sites. The most important of which is the need to quickly build and maintain student trust. Very early on in the course students need to feel confident that this is a bonafide organisation who can deliver on their promises. Pharmalink don’t seem to understand this.
Their communication has been poor or absent in key areas. As they don't seem to accept this issue, it’s easier for them to blame students for misunderstanding them. What they don’t seem to realise is that significant issues are arising due to their failure to clearly communicate important details instead of assuming students should just know.
An example of this is their ambiguous communication regarding assignment marking. They have a system whereby assignments are graded into 2 categories - standard met or standard not met. They say that we can only proceed to the next assignment once the previous assignment has been approved and that if after the 2nd submission the standard is not met then there can be no further resubmissions of that assignment.
I and many other students understood this to mean that if we do not meet the required standard after the 2nd submission then we cannot progress to the next assignment. They never stated in their communication what happens after 2 failed submissions and what the implication is for our continuation of the course.
As replies to individual communication have not always been prompt, I spent over a week in a highly distressed state believing I had failed the course, thinking about how much of my time, my hopes, my money I had invested in this course only now to have failed and lost everything.
Only after a variety of issues arose which affected a number of students, did they invite us to a Zoom meeting where they eventually clarified that even if you do not meet the required standard on a particular assignment, you can just continue on to the next assignment with the failed assignment just getting left.
If they had clearly communicated this to us in the beginning so much upset, distress and bad feeling towards them could have been avoided.
Dorothy doesn’t feature in the course, at least until now. Most of the student communication is through a student from last year’s cohort, a doctor from Nigeria, who speaks quickly and with a heavy accent which makes it hard particularly for those of us who are not native English speakers to understand her. She can appear very rude and dismissive to students, and gives abrupt or evasive answers to legitimate questions.
The weekly writing classes are run by an experience American regulatory medical writer who clearly knows her stuff, but the fact that she is only on audio, not video, really detracts from the experience and leads to a feeling of disengagement and remoteness.
Much of the assignment marking is done by last year’s students, only a couple of the assignments so far have been marked by experienced writers.
I can’t say so far that I feel I have had good value for money……. Let’s see how it goes…….








