The Torrens University online MBA

Torrens University, Australia's newest teritary institution was formally opened in 2014 with much fanfare following a flying visit from former US President Bill Clinton.

As Torrens University is part of the Laureate network, the university has links to a vast network of universities worldwide with what I expected to be shared resources and synergies. In 2016 Torrens University bought out Chifley Business School in what should have been a positive transaction for students - sadly this was not the case.

I am tending to believe the quality of their teaching and learning just isn't what I initially expected. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of New England, a well established regional university with an excellent reputation for online education. I had grown accustomed to a quality learning process so my expectations were relatively high.

The staff interactions were excellent, we were required to join online discussions and we received marks for mandatory posts on a learning outcome and we were required to provide a minimum number of referenced replies to student posts.

This brought about excellent student interactions and we learnt from fellow students. I had trouble with one lecturer and was dismayed to have him for a second semester directly after I complained about him.

Torrens University started well, the client advisor was an American from Walden University in the United States, he was in constant contact with me during the initial stages.

The Americans know customer service and this guy was good; however, it appears he was sequestered for the start-up phase and when he returned to the United States so did the outstanding service.

Torrens University utilises the Blackboard learning management system like many tertiary institutions and colleges. So this learning management system is industry standard.

I had previously used the Moodle learning system so a period of adjustment was necessary. However, the Torrens University instructional design processes are well below expected standard I expected.

Furthermore, they have not been updated each unit since before the Chifley Business School purchase and we were doing outdated assessments from previous trimesters. That in itself isn't a bad thing if the assessments are good.

The issues arose from different versions and the dates on the assignments - it was very confusing as you were never sure of submission dates. When you are undertaking multiple units, setting schedules was much harder than it needed to be.

The schedule dates in some units were aligned to trimester 1, 2015 and we were in trimester 2, 2016, this made following the schedule almost impossible and complaints weren't headed.

The lecturers didn't have access to the learning management system course design and were instead purely learning facilitators, initially some of whom were employed at rival universities. I am guessing a contract was awarded for the initial course design but an ongoing maintenance contract was not costed and instructional designers were not employed on staff.

Torrens University was not utilising hard copy textbooks instead opting for the Vitalsource electronic book; ok, that is an acceptable option. The problem arose after the amalgamation.

The learning management system wasn't updated and the required readings were totally skipped instead just relying on supplementary readings that really didn't align to learning outcomes.

As the learning management system still aligned to the required reading, I searched online for a free pdf version of the textbook that I shared with my fellow students - not good enough.

These courses are not cheap and they initially came with ebooks for study, all of a sudden after the amalgamation, the ebooks were dumped and the course required us to still read certain chapters.

Supplementary readings are exactly that, supplemental information to reinforce an objective and are not core learning concepts. Now they were being used as the main source of learning, the required online interactions really didn't embed learning and the concepts were really unclear.

I won't complain too much, I received a scholarship that saw me granted advanced standing and a discount on the remaining units that saw the price significantly reduced. One hopes the management really engages in self-reflection and engages in critical analysis like we are told we should do.

All in all I enjoyed the online experience despite the stress, I began with two units per trimester but soon worked out after the second trimester that I was unable to keep up the pace. Instead I only undertook a single unit per trimester.

I was able to concentrate on the coursework, even then I struggled as there is plenty to learn. This took me beyond the timeframe of my scholarship but I felt I gained more out of it and there was really no value graduating in the middle of a downturn.