TAFE Digital Strathfield - Strathfield, New South Wales

Rain

I have been waiting on a transcript for months. I have requested this transcript three times and it has not arrived yet, I need to have it to enrol in another course as proof of prior learning. It looks like it won’t arrive in time for the course enrolment cut off date. So thanks TAFE digital! The whole attitude at TAFE digital is they don’t care and they act like students are a burden or a nuisance. Most of the teachers are there to earn extra income so they don’t take teaching seriously or see it as their primary professional-more a side hustle. The whole experience was infuriating from start to finish.

Shadow D.

If possible take yourself to an in person campus, TAFE Digital is a waste of time.

Wait Times
It takes a week or more to receive email responses to questions and all day to get a call back if you ring them right on 9am.
It takes 3 to 7 business days to mark assessments, which would be fine, if they actually gave useful feedback that would allow you to fix your mistakes (my most recent assessment got feedback after waiting 6 business days "this is wrong" and "fix this" (sadly not joking), I then had to email and ask for more information (which takes another week to receive any response)).

Errors
Most workbooks and assessments have errors in them (these are the exact same workbooks you get in person, but at least the in person teachers are aware of the errors and know to work around them), the Digital teachers will either give you an "errors" booklet (which just points out some errors and what you are actually meant to do) or will tell you to look at the microsoft teams for help (teachers rarely answer questions on teams, its mostly students helping other students with everyone being equally confused and frustrated over errors that no-one will ever fix). When I was at a physical campus, the teacher actually told us that the workbooks are from a bigger textbook and some staff just removed what they thought "wasn't important" which is why much of the workbooks won't make sense... Its literally missing large amounts of context...

Emails
When emailing and encountering issues, either with continuous lack of answers (not having questions answered after multiple attempts) or receiving rude responses, I would recommend taking a photo and making an official complaint on the TAFE website so that they have to do something about it (taking a photo more for yourself than them as I made a complaint about a rude response (I asked a question about an assessment that I couldn't figure out how to start, hoping for a push in the right direction, and got "this is basic accounting" and "you are CLEARLY not ready for this assessment" (like I'm not in a course to teach me exactly the "basic accounting" skills that you are referring to)) and within 36 hours that email chain was gone).
I will also recommend asking one question per email as I have had issues with getting answers to multi-part questions and even had entire paragraphs ignored (when there are more that 2 paragraphs that are more than 2 sentences each)

Calls
If you are confident enough to call for every problem, keep your student number nearby and and know exactly what part you are asking about. Teachers will get tired of answering your questions and tell you that it will be faster by booking an online appointment (3 days in advance for only 10 minutes of their time... Just call them). People with accent deafness may encounter issues as only 1/5 of all calls I made/received did I get an Australian accent, at least 2/3 of the rest were Indian accents of different strengths and speeds.

Changing Locations
If you decide that you've had enough, you can request transfers. But if they tell you "campus is not accepting transfers and you have to enrol", show up at the campus and they will very happily help you (if there is a reasonable time to get you in and finished) and be just as confused as you when you tell them that they (campus) are not accepting transfers

TAFE Digital doesn't care about students, you are just a number, so make as many official complaints as possible without being rude yourself.

6 days after-edit
I filled out a complaint form 3 days after making this review (so its 3 days old at this point), and have had no response.
Day 4 complaint- received a standard AI response saying that it could take 30 business days, unless told otherwise (probably on the 30th business day), to receive a response.
Edit-Complaint
33 days after submitting the complaint, I received a response. The response was basically that, yes they could prove that the things I talked about happened, but that because I already fixed the issue (I moved to a campus), that they wouldn't do anything else.

Molly M.

I clicked on a link sent to me in an email to access my online course materials. I logged in to the student hub and then selected the ols option to access my study materials and assessments. To cut a long story short apparently that link was to the OLD course materials and the OLD assessments which have since been superseded. The correct link was to be found at the very bottom of the page by scrolling down. The IT staff had directed me to click on the top link not the bottom. So I spent a month completing assessments and work for a defunct unit. I had to start all over again today from the beginning on completely new assessments. I called the teaching section to complain and instead of offering an apology for a confusing website which really should have had the old materials deleted or at the very least a note to students who inadvertently accessed those materials, I was made to feel like an imbecile who couldn’t follow basic instructions. I have all the emails sent to me about course materials access and nowhere does it specify the correct link to follow. I was also repeatedly given wrong information about which links to click on by IT staff. I have completed online university level subjects so I am not a newbie at this. Extremely frustrating experience.
Do better.

Illa W.

I am waiting on subject results for a cert in Tourism. However I can’t make a start on the next section of the course as this is locked until I get the results of the first couple of units and pass those.. Whose intelligent idea was that? To basically lock students out of the majority of the course until they get results which btw are taking WAY too long. This is ridiculous. I can see why other people are so angry with their experience.

Emilee A.

I was planning on spending this weekend working on my study and great news the TAFE digital student login keeps freezing, so I can’t login and access my study materials. This has happened before. Today it is happening on my home computer and my local internet cafe. So apparently there is no access for some unknown reason.

Levi V.

I’m doing my cert IV I. Residential Drafting through Tafe Digital. It’s been a horrible experience, it’s so disjointed, unorganised and confusing. I’m strongly considering leaving the course. The help from the teachers was good initially, but after contacting them a few times for help I could see that their patience was growing thin, one teacher said to me yesterday over the phone “ well if you used the correct terminology this wouldn’t happen” I’m sorry I don’t know your correct terminology a couple of months into the course. The entire course has been stressful. I work full time and have a 2 year old, so the online aspect was very appealing. But honestly don’t waste your time.

Jess A.

I agree with the other negative comments, though the teachers do try to answer questions in teams. The assessments are the biggest issue; some are so poorly structured and written, that it's almost like they don't want anyone to understand them. I end up wasting a HUGE amount of time just trying to figure out what they want from me. I don't know if I'll finish to be honest.

EDIT: it should not take a Google review for TAFE to want to investigate, when we have all been complaining about it in the Teams channel for many months (if not years)? For example, the Chemicals double-unit AHCCHM304 and AHCCHM307. Most of the messages on Teams by students are about their frustration at the inability to navigate the assessments. All you need to do is talk to the teachers. They'll tell you what's wrong and what to fix, they are fully aware of what I'm talking about.

caitlyn P.

Take forever to mark assessments, the communication is poor and they are slow to respond, questions in assessments are poorly worded and often don't make sense, the topics of some of the questions in assessments cannot be found in any of the material they provide you with leaving you to google and teach yourself about said topics, they do scheduled maintenance at inconvenient times such as 3pm on a Friday afternoon, the enrolment process took much longer than necessary due to slow or no responses from staff and took way to long to get my credit transfer from a previous course.

It is disgusting that I have had so many issues in just over a year of being enrolled here despite countless emails and calls and hours of sitting on hold and nothing gets done to fix any of these issues. Having to contact the minister for education's office in order to get in contact with Tafe digital is ridiculous. I hope that not everyone enrolled here has to deal with the same issues I have faced.