Name: Freevacy Ltd
Address: 13 Stephenson Court Priory Business Park, Bedford
Rating: 4.73

“I find it incredibly confusing that the course notes and training slides are not in the same order and the content is massively different, e.g stuff is mentioned in the text but not in the slides or vice versa . Ive been on a couple of different freevacy courses and this has been the case with both.”

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Posted 7 months ago

Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry that your experience wasn't as you would have hoped. The BCS Essentials Certificate in Artificial Intelligence is a new course for us; as such, we are still evolving the materials. We develop our BCS course manual and slides in-house, and our goal is to provide sufficient information to align with the syllabus as well as other relevant additional information to provide further context to the topics. Our trainer thought some of the BCS slides were helpful and included them. While he added a slide at the beginning to explain the manual and slides are not always in sync, we can see how this might be confusing. We have taken your feedback onboard and will endeavour to make sure the presentation and manual fit together better in the future. Regarding the BCS practitioner certificate in data protection, this is an established programme for us, and we are confident that the materials align. We would be happy to discuss your experience in order to understand why you had difficulty in following the course.

Posted 5 months ago

“Firstly, Amber was excellent. Really knowledgeable and friendly, good at breaking things down and explaining things and I have absolutely no complaints with her delivery. What I was not a fan of, is the training format or course content. Usually in online training courses, you are put into breakout rooms or spaces and asked to discuss ideas or given case studies to analyse together etc. then invited back to discuss as a group. As someone who really struggles to retain information delivered in a lecture format, I found it quite hard to follow, particularly as the nature of the course is centered around the dissection of legislation and legal text, which is very 'wordy'. We did have multiple choice questions to complete individually at the end of each day but this doesn't encourage free thinking as the correct answer will always be written in front of you as a prompt. Similarly, it doesn't create any real opportunity for discussion or application of learning.”

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Posted 10 months ago

“I have just attended the CISMP course run by Tony. Tony had many interesting stories and case studies that were relevant to information security issues. To someone experienced in information security, this would be really helpful. I did however find that the number of stories was very distracting in conjunction with the course/chapter content. Because I am relatively new to information security, I struggled to understand what information formed part of the course. Many times throughout the course we would spend large chunks of time on a case study, but by the end, he would say we would not need to know this for the exam. As it is a foundation exam, I am at this stage just looking to understand the basics and obtain a good mark in the exam. Unlike the FOI and DP course, we did not do any sample questions, instead we did group exercises. I always found the sample questions extremely helpful in understanding what type of questions would come up in the exam. Equally, Tony mentioned we do not have a mock exam day. We have been given 25 sample questions at the back of the book, but we did not run through these, nor any other sample questions. I think this also does not help you to understand what you might be asked on the course. Lastly, the manual/booklet that we were supplied did not correlate to Tony's slides. Tony had 180+ slides, whereas the manual has 118. He did provide us with an electronic copy of the manual with the total slides, but I much prefer to write & make notes on a page when revising. Thank you to Tony for his time.”

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Posted 1 year ago

Hi Eleanor, Thank you for your comments regarding the CiSMP course. All feedback is valuable, and your comments have been noted. As educators, we aim to help our delegates develop lifelong skills while preparing them to sit and pass an exam. With this in mind, we encourage our trainers to deviate from the course content to impart a broader understanding of the topic, sometimes thinking beyond the exam to consider how to apply what is being discussed in a learning environment practically. That said, it's imperative to strike the right balance. We regularly work on this and will consider your feedback to assess whether we got this right. Regarding an exam preparation day and mock exam, the CiSMP is a Foundation-level course, which, when delivered in its traditional classroom format, involved taking the exam on the last day of the course. However, since the move to online training, the course is run over five mornings, with the majority of delegates generally taking the exam the following week. Therefore, there is not an allowance for a separate exam prep or mock exam day as there is with Practitioner courses. Like the Practitioner level courses, we offer additional 1-2-1 coaching and support to delegates to help them prepare for the CiSMP exam. We would like to extend this offer to you, so please let us know how we can help.

Posted 1 year ago

“Training presentation could be more articulated and explained in more practical terms.”

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Posted 1 year ago

“Course was initially advertised to me as a 5 day course and ended up being 10 days. I would suggest breaking the slides up more, with other another type of activity. Having the Foundation course as a pre-requisite would have been useful.”

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Posted 2 years ago

Hi Steven, Thank you for your feedback. We understand it can be difficult to take time out for professional development, especially when there is a sudden change in your expectations of what is required. We are unsure how the correct information did not get through to you, given that the duration of the course is explained in several places on our website and documentation. The BCS GDPR Practitioner course is only delivered over five days in a face-to-face classroom environment, but due to COVID, we adapted the presentation and found the flow to work better when delivered across ten half-day online sessions. The information is clearly outlined within the joining instructions emailed directly to all delegates before the course commences, a copy you would have received. Your employers also acknowledged the change in delivery since the last time we provided this training prior to the pandemic. However, we understand this information may not have been relayed to you. Given all that we have done, in this instance, there are no changes that we can make to improve our process, which would help prepare delegates before joining one of our courses, but we thank you for your feedback. We are also grateful for your advice to other potential interested delegates that the BCS Foundation Certificate in Data Protection should be a prerequisite before advancing onto the Practitioner level you attended. We agree with this for anyone new to the subject and make such recommendations to prospective customers already. This was also discussed and offered with your employers. We are, in fact delivering the BCS GDPR Foundation course online for your employer alongside the Practitioner course, but as we are sure you understand, it is not our responsibility to decide who is allocated to attend or at what level. The BCS Practitioner Certificate in Data Protection is a highly challenging qualification to obtain, even for those with several years of experience working in privacy compliance. We will, of course, be on hand to help with your preparations to pass your BCS exam should you require any additional assistance, whether via email or even one-to-one coaching during your self-study period. We also have the one-day exam preparation event booked, where we will give you some final coaching before your exam.

Posted 2 years ago

“The FOI course is a massive amount of information to take in. Obviously the trainer is incredibly knowledgeable but there was a distinct lack of what I would call "groundwork". I wanted a brief overview of exemptions, sections, etc. but the trainer referred to things e.g. Section 2 or schedule 2 in the assumption that the class knew what it meant. I had no idea. While I have worked in data protection I have limited knowledge of FOI. The fact that we finished early every day was very nice but I was more than happy to stay until 4.30 in order to try and learn more rather than having to do it on my own now in order to get through the BCS exam. I would have liked a lot more exercises and discussions about things in order to get them into my brain. When we did discuss things I found FOI easier to understand. I am somewhat panicked that I now have to put in a large number of hours in order to be prepared for the exam, at this moment in time I am not ready at all.”

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Posted 4 years ago

We are always extremely saddened to hear a delegate feels one of our courses did not meet their expectations, so we welcome your comments, which will enable us to improve our service. It is not uncommon that delegates will possess different levels of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter when starting a course. It is for that reason we issue comprehensive pre-course reading, which is aimed at levelling the basic understanding, including terminology. We believe this approach is more beneficial, whereas the alternative would involve setting copious amounts of homework each night of the course. We also understand some delegates book onto courses quite late and can only read a small amount before the commencement of the course. However, our system of running courses is to cover a set amount of information, while allowing for exercises, discussions and lots of questions and answers to occur during the day. A lot of information is covered in class. Still, we plan days to allow time to continue digesting the pre-course reading in the early evenings before leaving the class or later in the comfort of the delegates home (or hotel rooms). Every morning, we have a Q&A session, where it’s essential to understand NO question is considered inappropriate or unwelcome. Delegates are also encouraged to ask questions in private or send an email if they feel uncomfortable asking in a class setting. Asking questions or using Freevacy as a sounding board is free service for life, which we are happy to say many of our delegates take up. Not only while attending a course, but also when studying for the BCS exam. This is particularly important considering the BCS recommendation of a further 40-hours self-study before sitting a practitioner level exam. At the start of all courses, we create a relaxed and friendly setting for everyone to introduce themselves. We do this to encourage people to explain what experience they have and how long they have been working within the specific area of the course. We take on board how some delegates may feel uncomfortable doing this and may only cover the experience held in other specialities leaving us with a misconception of their knowledge. We will attempt to find ways of not letting that happen in the future.

Posted 4 years ago

“I think it was a disadvantage to not be supplied answers to the exercise questions we completed, as we could not learn the correct answers. The course could have been more interactive with more revision exercises to help us learn, it was a very tedious format.”

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Posted 5 years ago

At Freevacy we are always saddened when a delegate is unhappy with the process of a course. All courses have very limited time to cover large amounts of information, but discussion is the main element of all our courses, if the amount of discussion and interaction was limited for one delegate, we will make a note and attempt to incorporate even more in future courses. Freevacy has developed a large number of sample questions in a booklet format. Dependent on the course undertaken, there is an example answer booklet to request from Freevacy once they have attempted the questions as revision for their exams. The questions and answers are suggestions only based on our experience, but delegates are encouraged to study further and not rely solely on our examples. This process does not apply to the BCS Data Protection Foundation course as this is a three-day course with an exam at the end of the three days, it would be inappropriate for delegates to attempt to learn suggested questions and answers and should rely on their knowledge gained through the course in the exam. We do however, work through over 60 sample multiple choice questions and discuss each one fully throughout the course giving every delegate the best possible opportunity to understand the exam process and feel confident to take and pass their Foundation exam.

Posted 5 years ago

“Trainer provided brief information mostly contained within the freevacy pack. explanations and further detail was lacking. Freevacy materials were very resourceful however.”

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Posted 5 years ago


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