Anyone else doing a VCE subject via VSV? How are you finding it? I need to rant.

[altea]

I'm doing software development via the VSV. I've got my sister's friend brother acting as a tutor for me because he did it in high school, and a teacher from my main school who isn't technically supposed to be teaching me but is providing me with heaps of support. I'm so glad I have them because if I didn't I'd be absolutely screwed.

They're absolutely terrible and so unprofessional.

The teachers take ages to respond to messages or questions. The course is full of typos. Sometimes I go onto the content for the week and I can't even finish the work because they haven't finished writing it.

Most of it is literally just copied and pasted from W3Schools or other tech-related websites. This also leads to conflicts with the information in the textbook and on the curriculum as some of the terminology used in the websites is different to the terminology used in VCE. Often there are large copied-and-pasted slabs of texts and I don't know what I'm meant to memorise and what is irrelevant.

During online lessons, they very rarely go over the content - they chat and make jokes. I find myself having to interrupt or ask whether it is relevant to the content to get us back on track. The lessons go on for over an hour so I always have to bluntly interrupt the banter and ask all my questions so I can hurry and leave.

I had a SAC recently. An entire page of the SAC was literally just a bunch of cartoons/comics. Like, the page was covered with like six different cartoons. I thought they would be somehow be related to the SAC so I read them during my reading time. Then I realised that they were just put there for amusement or something. Thank you for taking up my reading time. The rest of the SAC was scattered with irrelevant comics as well. And there was also a screw-up where part of the SAC didn't go through and they took days to get back to us about it. Even the person handling it at my school was getting pissed.

I have never received any feedback from them ever. I have done maybe four??? SACS this year and maybe three SAT submissions. Never got a single piece of feedback. The other day during an online class I asked how I was doing because I literally had no clue whether I was passing or failing. They told me my grade on a submission in the chat. The bloody chatbox. Why couldn't they have sent me a report?

In Semester 1 they sent out reports. They gave me an S for the first part and an N for the second part. I freaked out because I thought I was failing. Turns out they hadn't finished doing the reports so they just put an N in all of them for that part, and said they'd give us a  finished one later. They never even gave me any other feedback. No grade, no written feedback. Two letters.

I had a meet with them recently where they gave me feedback (finally!!!) on my SAT. They told me it was very good, that the quality of my weekly submissions had been excellent. Well, thanks, because I thought for most of the year that I was going to fail. And honestly, I wouldn't say my work is that spectacular. So if mine is excellent, what is everybody else's like? I've been in contact with other kids in my class and they're failing things, they're confused all the time, they have no clue whether they're passing or failing. I think it's because they don't have the support that I do at my real school. And it's awful.

I really like the content. It's a subject that interests me a lot. So it's a real damn shame that the VSV is so shit.

[Failingvce]

yep I'm doing biology distance and I've faced similar issues. The typos are horrible, they take years to respond, so long that some of my peers had to complain to the coordinators and AFTER the coordinator sent them an angry email they started responding. I've basically learned everything myself this year and the coursework they do give is unorganised and often contains a lot of irrelevant info. I basically blocked out most of unit 3 and didn't pay any attention so now I'm left with a whole year's worth of content to revise in less than 2 weeks before the biology exam.
I feel your pain   just keep pushing through and it'll be over soon

[altea]

yep I'm doing biology distance and I've faced similar issues. The typos are horrible, they take years to respond, so long that some of my peers had to complain to the coordinators and AFTER the coordinator sent them an angry email they started responding. I've basically learned everything myself this year and the coursework they do give is unorganised and often contains a lot of irrelevant info. I basically blocked out most of unit 3 and didn't pay any attention so now I'm left with a whole year's worth of content to revise in less than 2 weeks before the biology exam.
I feel your pain   just keep pushing through and it'll be over soon

Yeah haha. I have my exam in exactly a month. I have just taught myself most of the year's worth of content in two weeks or so. I'm trying to finish learning it now - in the span of a month. I figured for most of the year that surely they would cop on at some point but they never did. And I was always trying to do the weekly submissions which often bore little relevance to the curriculum content, or even if they did were not very useful for revising/remember/reenforcing the content. Ridiculous.

[Failingvce]

Yeah haha. I have my exam in exactly a month. I have just taught myself most of the year's worth of content in two weeks or so. I'm trying to finish learning it now - in the span of a month. I figured for most of the year that surely they would cop on at some point but they never did. And I was always trying to do the weekly submissions which often bore little relevance to the curriculum content, or even if they did were not very useful for revising/remember/reenforcing the content. Ridiculous.

haha good on you for making weekly submissions. I gave up and didn't even bother submitting the last few weeks of work. I'm not expecting much honestly but I don't care at this point and I just want to get it over and done with. good luck with your revision