Algonquin College : Ottawa
Algonquin College : Ottawa is a established in (unknown). The campus is located in and hosts students with an endowment of .
Address:
Phone: (no local phone number)
Email: (no public email address)
Institution Type: Unknown
Established: Unknown
Campus Enrollment: N/A
Acceptance Rate: N/A
Graduation Rate (6Y): N/A
Campus Endowment: N/A
Tuition (Local): N/A
Tuition (Non-Local): N/A
Tuition (Foreign): N/A
Mandatory Fees: N/A
Housing (Room): N/A
Latitude:
Longitude:
Tax ID: N/A
Avoid this course at Algonquin at all costs. There is an insurmountable list of reasons to avoid this course but it basically boils down to inconsistency in quality and lack of teaching. There are a few good teachers but most of the classes are at night where the people teaching have a full time day job so they don’t care to answer questions or engage with students whatsoever to help them succeed.
The labs for some of the course are a complete joke and I can’t believe they charge money to take the program. The lab will consist of a word documents randomly names Lab03_labName_V2_final_v3 and be a few unformatted lines of questions that don’t teach you anything. Sometimes the labs are even outdated or contain the wrong info and this is all because the lab teachers are separate from the theory and just come in and hand out whatever is in their brightspace. The labs will have a 2 hours time limit, and if you don’t complete the lab you pass in what you’ve completed and get marked on that. Sometimes teachers are late, sometimes they release the lab and just leave the classroom so if you have issues with something on the lab you’re on your own. This is particularly frustrating in the programming lab as there is a 30 minutes explanation at the start, you then get the lab which you read through the 3 pages, load up the starter code and read through that to understand how it works, solve the problem, and by this point the class is almost over and you still need to create your pseudocode or flowchart and fill out two test tables that have no specified requirements but if you miss a test case you lose marks. To me, this defeats the point of learning and just enforces speed running the lab to get marks.
The computer essentials course also needs a complete rework. The slides each week range from 50 slides – 200 slides of information and you don’t get to apply 95% of it. Without an outline for exams it would be the equivalent of studying an entire textbook on barely related information from one week to the next. From tech organizations, computer hardware, VM and Linux cmd line, excel, and e-waste at the end. It all just feel like you’re learning a list of things to memorize and never actually get to fully learn.
Lastly I want to mention the “new” hybrid model they’ve adopted. Essentially they only teach you half the time but still charge you for the full price of the course. You have these hybrid sections where you get to go home and teach yourself new concepts for the other half.
The quality here is bordering on abysmal and when you try to make formal complaints about the issues its like screaming into the void. They keep raking in the money so why would they care too much.
If anyone has doubts about the quality and may think I’m just doing poorly, I’m currently averaging A+ and have experienced other schools. Algonquin has been the worst by far.
Coming from someone with university experience, these kids don’t have manners and it’s interesting to me that the teachers seem to encourage it.. meanwhile all the quiet or introverted kids dropped out or barely got recognition…
The workload was not too bad some of it was useful but coming to class is just awful when there is obvious favortism… it just made coming to class feel like a chore… Alot of these kids come from small towns so they think they are still in high school and continue to act cliquey. Stop acting like you are at McGill when you are at Algonquin.
All the content is recycled from previous years.
Teachers constantly getting due dates confused, forgetting about classroom discussions they have scheduled and they are overall lazy.
You can tell most of them do not take the program seriously because it is online.
All the assignments give about a paragraph of explanation with no example and very limited instruction.
Their brightspace (formerly blackboard) site is completely disorganized. Every teacher uses it differently and can be very difficult to navigate. You’re on this website to find your calendar for the week, but then you need to go to a different website to get the actual lesson information.
Would not recommend online learning through Algonquin.
That was one example. Electromagnetic Control: my favourite of the worst experiences of my life: all of which were at this college (like losing all your money on an education that might leave you with $15-17/hour job – if you’re lucky): no materials available, you’re stripping bare wire, which isn’t a bad skill, but competing for that wire with 50-60 students. That’s right – a bunch of students, in one lab, with, yes, ONE INSTRUCTOR!!
Let’s get something straight. The quality of the teaching staff stem from the administration – where they only hire teachers part-time: right, like a grocery store, so they can avoid paying them benefits. Right, and because these part-time teachers do not make any money when they are not teaching.. do you see now: they have no incentive to update their course materials, because if they did they would be doing it for free!
Texidium came out the year I started with this school for my diploma. I completed my diploma and feel like I wasted my time, but let’s talk about Texidium for a bit. It was this new software platform whereby students would access their textbooks from. Students all paid for their textbooks within their tuition so that they could access their textbooks online. However, there was one problem, Texidium was used for one or two courses in the first semester, and never again.
In a nutshell, chances are you’re going to end up like me. You’re not going to see any negative reviews, you’re not going to see these that’s for sure because I sure as hell didn’t, and you’re going to waste your time and your money on an education that isn’t going to educate you to a standard necessary for a job.
I was a mature student who had saved for years to go to this place. Years. I have to turn around, fight for more money just so that I can choose a better institution to start all over with – my pick this time: Conestoga College.
Remember – no textbooks!! Biggest complaint. Blackboard is also used differently by all teaching staff, and some will forget to use it, or worse think they’ve used it, and do not.
The funny part about Algonquin College is the course description you see on the website. You do not get to learn even close to what they represent on paper. Come out with a diploma, and scratch your head thinking, “At least I learned what school not to attend,” and all to late for that matter.
Also, plagiarism is said to be frowned upon, but isn’t really when your classmates plagiarize the crap out their papers and still get an A+.
Grades are bell-curved if students fail during the first and second year, as your are not a student in as much as you are this institution’s cash cow. It’s true. If you don’t believe me, enroll for yourself and find out the hard way.
See how much damage they have done to the students. Ruthless. This school should be investigated, fined and closed.
Bottom line? Don’t waste you money there. The staff is not the most knowledgeable and the college doesn’t care if they take all your money to the point where you can’t afford tuition and ultimately delay your graduation/don’t graduate.
I applied to a program thru ontariocolleges.ca and later I found AC Admn staff were not aware of my credentials reports attached there and now the registrar office staff emailed me to send them another detail assessment report. She was telling me this after more than a month or 2 I applied. When one would tell them we would withdraw they would gladly cancel your file immediately does not bother if they lose candidates.
Therefore from today on I will never recommend this college to anyone the staff working there are unskilled untrained to understand diversity of students and qualifications. They are just junk I would advise people not to go to AC if they want to make a good future in highly paid careers then this is not a place. This college need overhaul and scrutiny to replace all existing staff and bring newer trained qualified staff to understand the complexity of students situation and regain trust of new students. I want to give Zero Star but cannot so I have to click on one star.
Another issue is the tuition. If you look at the fees it is some of the most lame excuse to steal money from their students I have ever seen. $25 dollar student experience fee. I’m paying to have an experience? I don’t give two fucks about having an experience! I just need that s**t-rag of a diploma you are offering me. Another good one is the $300 sports fee. What does this do? If I play no sports I still have to pay it, If I do play sports I also have to pay an additional fee. Why am I paying two fees! The list really goes on and on, like paying to bring your own laptop and things like that.
To end this before I burst a testicle, do not go to this school!
I found the Animation department being run by a faculty of incompetent instructors, who have absolutely no regard in assisting students with their projects, and take a very long time to provide feedback to students on their progress. The Animation coordinator doubled as the animation design teacher, and if you raised your hand and told him that you didn’t understand how to do the assignment, his arrogant reply was “Ask a student who does”. Really?! I thought the whole idea of going to school was to “learn”, but it seems that in this and most of the other classes I took, you better come equipped knowing how to do everything ALREADY! The animation drawing teacher was an animation graduate, who worked part time at Algonquin, and had NO teaching ability whatsoever. She had no knowledge of how to explain certain tasks related to animation, nor did she know how to answer questions from students. In animation, there were 90+ students in first year and only THREE computers to test out animation projects! Seriously!?? There was one tutor, who’d come in for 2 hours every Wednesday, and he would have to go by the waiting list of students written on the blackboard who needed help….very often he’d never get to your name. Really? 90+ students and ONE tutor? Something is seriously out of proportion here.
The Web Development teacher (graphic design) confirmed my decision to just leave the entire program. He would come in, give us a preachy, militant speech about code for about 3 minutes, and tell us to find our assignments on Canvas (there seems to be a pattern with this method of teaching—or lack thereof!) Naturally he assumed everybody knew how to code already. The course description is very deceiving, because they claim that they teach you the basics/foundation/introduction to code, but in reality, unless you already have an intermediate knowledge of code, you will be seriously lost. All assignments go through a “code corrector” system, and must be handed in before the deadline. If you have basically 99.9% of everything right, but can’t seem to find the tiny error that is preventing your code from getting a perfect 100% and don’t submit it on time, then you get a ZERO.
Overall, in both cases, there is a presumptuousness that you should already know all the fundamentals and software pertaining to the program, and if you don’t, that is entirely your problem.
I would not recommend this college to anyone, there are better institutions with much better teachers. Even my teachers at community college in California were better than most of the Algonquin college teachers.
The college is over capacity and there is no real place to work on assignments other than going somewhere outside the college.
For college services they are a waste of your time, they do not help your needs.
I wasted four years of my life and what I learnt can’t get me a job/career. You’re better off going to another post-secondary institution.
College services didn’t help at all.
A big waste of time going here.
Students also pay ~$250 a semester for the privilege of bringing their own laptop to the school. Yup you pay to bring your OWN laptop. You do get a few perks for that money. You can get a free copy of windows, that you probably won’t ever need. You can get a copy of Office at 3x the regular price. Or you can pay 6x the cost of regular books by enrolling in their ebook program. Let’s just say that I’ve had malware that was easier to use than their ebooks… Go for open waters Big Tuna. That school is useless.
Frist issue I have with them is that they list a numbers of differences course that you can take for your selective course, but they never let you choose them, they will put you in a course that they want you to be in. once I see I cant pick the course that I want to learn, I go to see my coordinal of my program and he just said, well sorry folks those class are full, we cant extended them! those class are priority for those are specifically apply for that course, and they are all full now. Then why are you putting it as a option when you are advertising them? and tell us sorry you cant take them, because they are not for your program.
second issue, is that they will include the e-textbook rental fees in your tuition fee without option for you to opt out…. well let say I want to keep that book for references later on, I have to go to the bookstore and pay for that book again? and they are not cheap!
Third issue is that all the new Professor are part-time, most of them don’t even go through colleges of teaching or anything similar to that… they know how to work in their field but not teaching us what we need to understand, some of them can even speak English fluently… let say if we cant understand what they are saying, how can we understand what they are trying to teach us? do they really care about us? do they care about our future? my answer would be no in my case.
Fourth Issue is that I went for a Computer program (2 year course plus co-op) after my 1st co-op term, I didn’t receive any email from school asking for the second term co-op letter of offer or anything like that. they took the money for the co-op term and in middle of Co-op term where I am about to submit my assignment, I couldn’t find the course to be available. Call them up, they said I was withdraw because I have no placement….. and took 150 out of 499 that I pay for the course, and yet they are not the one that find the job for me… I have to go and find it myself…. talking about find the job myself, they have something call Resume prof read, and that I am not sure what are they prof reading, I have to get other friend of my to look at it and help me time to time for my resume( after the colleges prof read and said yes it look perfect.)
Fifth issue is that they want more and more money every year and as early as they can get… my course wont start until Sept. 7 and I have to pay my tuition fee by June 15 the latest or else there would be penalty on that…and the funny thing is the timetable wont be available until AUG. 5th and I need the time table to coordinate with my work to see if I can continues to work part-time for this company(THIS IS MY FUTURE!!!!!!!!!!) call them up and check for time table today and all I get is sorry cant help you…so much for “student success is our priority and our goal” ….Great here you go my money take it and go….
My concludes is think twice and research more before you make your choice!!!!!
and if you ask me do I recommend this college I would say NO!