I’ve just finished up my year long, part time and fully online BSc Design Degree run by the Digital Skills Academy in Dublin in conjunction with the Dublin Institute of Technology and wanted to write a few words about the experience and to largely recommend the course to others.
I signed up for the course last January after seeing a Facebook add for it. I applied through the Springboard program which offers free courses to those qualified and was accepted because of my prior experience in the design sector having worked as a freelance Web & Graphic Designer since about 2003.
Topics Covered in my chosen “Design” stream:
- UX, UI & Concept Design
- Entrepreneurship, Creativity & Innovation
- Digital Industries & Career Development
- Front-end Web & Mobile Development
- Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
- Web Graphics Design & Production
- Digital Marketing Campaign Management
There was also a Major Project for the final 6 months were we worked as a team on a real life project.
My reasons for doing the course were:
- Gain a design qualification (had none!)
- Learn something new
- Networking
- Experience of teamwork (I work alone a lot)
- An internationally recognised Level 7 Bsc degree in only 1 year!?
The fact that the course was online and part time appealed to me as I still had my full time business to run as well as having a wife and three kids and things were kinda slow work wise. A 10-15 hour per week commitment was mentioned at the start of the course but we quickly realised that was a bit of an under statement! I think I put in about 25-30 hours per week at least for the first 6 months.
Course Best Bits:
- Flexible access
- Modern relevant content
- Team work
- NO EXAMS!
- Only 1 year!
- Introduction to online learning tools
- Our Facebook group
- Networking
Course Worse Bits:
- Moodle learning system
- Project brief confusion
- Support delays (Forum & Email)
- Inflexible LiveSync timings
- Tolerating poor teammates
Conclusion:
I would highly recommend Digital Skills Academy courses. The lecturers are knowledgeable and accessible, the content is relevant to the modern digital workplace. Team work is excellent experience and the networking aspect is fantastic too. Where else would you get a degree, part time in one year too!?
Leon,
Class of 2017
Reverb Studios Design 
Great review Leon. I didn’t realise the design stream covered all that. The degree awarded is Level 7. See http://www.webelevate.ie/
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Oops, fixed the Level thing. Thanks Derek.
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Hey Leon, how’s it going? I was very interested to read your experience of this particular course. I too saw an advert for the course last year and I considered signing up to do it. One thing that made me hesitate was that I wasn’t too sure about how reputable the Digital Skills Academy was but after reading your post it seems there was nothing to worry about there. I also thought that the time commitment might turn out to be more than was initially suggested as can often be the case with online courses and after hearing your feedback it seems I was right on that front. You’ve done a great review there and I would certainly take another look. Cheers!
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I’ve heard that a lot about the Digital Skills Academy and we all looked into how legitimate the degree was at the start. It’s administered by DIT and just facilitated by the DSA and is a level 8, globally recognised degree so pretty legit I think. The time thing depends on how much you know already really. I skipped through a lot of the web and graphic design stuff pretty quickly so saved time there but if all subjects are new to you, treat it as a full time course I’d say. Loads learned at least anyway.
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