r/AthabascaUniversity

This weekend, I completed my final two classes for my BPA in Human Services! It took me 1.5 years (I had transfer credits from both a college and university diploma). If anyone has questions about this degree, I am happy to answer them the best that I can 😄

I was wondering if anyone can tell me their experiences with AU for accommodating ADHD. The process, what accommodation looks like, and if it really helped you. Any idea of what to expect would be great.
Thanks!

Hello everyone,

I have an important question about scheduling an AU exam, and I haven’t been able to reach anyone by phone.

I have to write my final exam by May 31. I know AU says exam requests can take up to 10 days to process, but I was hoping to write mine this Saturday and forgot to book it in time. The system is now only letting me choose May 29 as the earliest date.

When I booked my midterm, it was processed the next day, so I know it does not always take the full 10 days. If my invigilator is available and willing to let me write later this week, does anyone know if Exam Services can approve an earlier date even without the full 10 days notice?

Or would it be safer to just book May 29 to make sure I write before my contract ends?

I am taking a course online and I failed the first exam so I need to take the supplemental. When booking this through ProctorU, do I select the final exam or the challenge? I figured the challenge because the first one that I failed was the final but I’m not getting a response back from exam services and I can’t reschedule a supplemental after I book it so I want to make sure I’m doing it right.

Final project is ok. Lookimg for interesting classes with reasonable workload.

Hello all, so I’m currently living in Europe and working a job, but I found Athabaskan because I am trying to get into a masters program back home in Canada but since I started this journey they updated the course prerequisite requirement to include one I don’t have (love when they do that).

When looking into registration fees, it looks like there’s a $784 dollar extra “out of country fee”, which is kind of substantial to me. Is there anything stopping me from simply claiming I reside in Canada, and using a VPN to do all my studies? What kind of problems could u potentially run into - if any? Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks in advance.

Is it just me or has almost everyone attending AU been accused of academic misconduct especially the usage of AI, even when it’s not used they still accuse us! It’s actually crazy and they need to fix this because people are paying money and putting insane effort into their classes just for a tutor to fail you on a baseless argument and AU will back whatever they say.

Hi everyone, I’ve just completed the first third of BIOL 235 and wow that was a grind I really don’t like bones lol, but I wanted to get some insight on the difficulty and how to best tackle the last two thirds of the course so chapters 11-29. (Basically from muscles-spinal brain nervous systems all that-the various systems digestive/respiratory/lymphatic/endocrine/etc, special senses, cardio)

What chapters did you guys find the hardest ? Easiest ? What’s the best way to study for some of these chapters? Any tips on specific parts where they tested hard on? Important things to know ?

Any and all help is very much appreciated!!

I'll explain my whole story from the beginning with ENGL255, this might be lengthy

From the start I have always been a decent writer from high school till now. I was taking ENGL255 to fulfill a requirement for business and honestly the course itself was simple until one day I noticed that one of my assignments took a bit longer to be graded, and I found out a week or two later it had been flagged for misconduct. Keep in mind I had done it myself and submitted it like I submitted everything else the only problem is, I personally don't like using word document (preference) and I use google docs instead, usually I submit it like that no problem but this particular assignment the tutor required me to submit it as a word document, no problem right? Well being lazy I decided to just search up doc to word converter online and use that. I usually use that anyways and through the years I have had no problem with the submission issues. Even with the old assignments I usually did that and found no issues, but this particular one they accused me of misconduct due to the author being "python" or something like that, through my research I figured out it was normal that it usually happens with converters and I submitted my appeal and even stated I would give my old drafts and writing process as proof.

As I waited for a response 2 months later they concluded evidence and said I got caught for plagiarism. From what I've researched through universities and the appeal process it's usually a multi-step process not a one and done thing. Anyways a month later, I finished the course and realized that I finished the course with a mark that I wasn't satisfied with due to that one assignment that messed up my mark. After back and forth with tutors and the appeal office, I unfortunately had to retake the final exam (200$ by the way) and after a week of researching essays, seeing my feedback on my assignments and practicing for days even with a job mind you. I felt prepared to write my supplemental exam, I had to pay another 60$ with proctor to take it on that day as well but I didn't care because through all the stress, hardship and breakdowns I got because of this situation, it didn't matter to me.

Anyways to give you a breakdown, on my first exam I got a 70% and I really did rush that final exam due to me having to already take 5 exams in a week (in person exams as well) so this time on my supplemental exam I decided to take my sweet time and use the full 2 hours and 30 minutes to write the most beautiful piece of literature I could conjure up, sitting for a whole 2 hours no bathroom breaks, no water just writing. So after finally finishing, I was satisfied and submitted as needed, and a few days went by and I didn't get a mark back, I called Athabasca and they stated it takes a few days after it had been posted for you to get the mark.

A few days after I woke up and checked my grades to find there was a hold on my account and they couldn't describe the hold so I decided to call Athabasca AGAIN and they stated it was due to misconduct, I contacted the Integrity Coordinator and although it is still ongoing he said it was due to something I submitted recently and its under investigation and it may take 1-2 weeks to send the information to me. Keep in mind I have to send my transcripts by May 18th (it's May 15th right now) and due to my experience before it took a total of 2 months to process. I'm honestly at a loss for words at this entire process I have never been caught for plagiarizing ever and that's not even talking about this entire supplemental exam, even the proctor didn't flag me for anything I was doing wrong in the exam. I have been extremely disappointed and confused and it just sucks because when you work hard and you just get accused of something you didn't do it makes you question everything. I hope no one goes through what I have been going through and I've always been good with managing stress but this is genuinely overwhelming.

After each term l've posted a review of the courses I took, I know we all find reviews helpful when figuring out what to take next. (I can link previous course reviews in the comments)

For context, I am a single mom of 3 kids (3,8,9) , funded so courses were completed in 4 months.
Also in the middle of year 2 of the 4year Psych Ba.
This term was SOCI 290, SOCI 287, PSYC 395, PSYC
356.

PSYC 395- Forensic Psychology
Final Grade- A
This course is comprised of 12 Quizzes that are only worth 7% each. Quizzes are extremely easy. Mostly based directly on textbook vocab. Terms are usually in Bold. However sometimes the quizzes will throw in random questions to throw you off.

The Tutor for this course didn't like my final paper.
But there were no parameters given for what to write about. The tutor just said - write it on anything in the course. So I felt lost right off the bat. He gave me a 68% so clearly wasn't what he was looking for.

Course content was fairly interesting, not overly interesting but not boring either. I took a month to complete this course. But theoretically it could be done in less time. I would consider it an easy course but it does take a little bit of effort.

SOCI 287 - Into. To Sociology
Final Grade - B-
Of all the courses l've taken so far, this one was by far one of the most frustrating. I thought sociology just wasn't my thing. I was telling everyone how much I hated sociology as a concept.
Every assignment I was getting between 50% and 70%. There is a lot of emphasis in the course materials to not just regurgitate the textbook in your journal entries. So mine were personal and I related the course key terms to my life experiences. Apparently what they asked for is not what my tutor wanted to read. Evidently I did way better on the assignments where all I did was restate key terms- which is exactly what we were told not to do.

Soci 290 - Social Problems
Final Grade - A+
Thankfully I was already enrolled in this course and couldn’t drop it. Soci 287 had me never wanting to take another sociology course ever again.
I wouldn’t say this is an easy A course but it’s definitely not hard. Kinda like psyc 478.
The info I learned in Soci 287 really came in handy here and finally I saw the grades I felt I deserved. Course content was very repetitive of 287 but I enjoyed that one of the assignments didn’t require citations, or only citations from the text book.

A lot of the assignments were pass/fail so therefore an automatic 100% for a pass.

Psyc 356- Intro to Personality
Final Grade - B+
I was literally 1% short of an A- for this course.
Again another tutor that did not like my writing unfortunately. Maybe I was shit this term lol.
This course was A LOT. Typically I try to do 1 course per month and this one took literally all 4 months for me. That said, I took a lot of notes and yes the quizzes are open book but the notes really came in handy.
On the 5 quizzes I did fairly well, losing marks usually because of the long answers. Each quiz has 3-4 long answers worth 5 marks each. So I’d lose one or two here and there which added up.
Otherwise did great on the multiple choice sections.

This course threw a curveball. If you’re familiar with the Avengers franchise you might see the 2 essays on it as fun. For me I was like “gahhhhhhhh whyyyyy?”. Not knowing the characters well enough and not being able to watch the full movie without getting hella bored… ended up costing me marks for those 3 assignments. (2 essays and 1 conclusion assignment)

The final was weird too. Again open book and they provided a full 24hours to complete it. I went in not worried at all. And the weirdest part were questions about where specific theorists were born. For example it asked if one was born in Alberta. But the textbook only named the city. If you’re not from Alberta you had to google to find that. - or at least I did.

I got an assignment back recently that I don’t think was graded appropriately. I’ve brought this up respectfully with my tutor, and asked for clarification on his marking. He’s avoiding my questions and it honestly feels like he doesn’t know why I received the mark I did either. I want to understand where I went wrong (if I even did), and feel it’s not unreasonable to ask for justification on my grade. Where do I go from here? Do I contact the professor? I’m a bit concerned about retaliation from him if I go above his head, but this is ridiculous.

Are the grades on the screen always accurate or are they regraded by a human?
I just wrote the 1st cumulative assessment for nurs326 and while I was doing it, it felt like I was doing really well, and then when I finished, the immediate grade on the screen was TERRIBLE.
The quiz was some multiple choice, short answer, select all that apply. We often had to give our rationale. Almost immediately the grade was transferred to pulse.
Did I actually do this badly???? I don’t understand how those rationale questions could be immediately graded by the computer, or am I just in denial??
I panic emailed my tutor but I’m wondering if anyone else has been through this? Did I just majorly fail this quiz or is there still hope?

Just curious about the reputation of this school and what it’s like taking classes here.

Did the cost of scheduling exams go up with ProctorU or is it just me?
Why is it $30-$50 USD to schedule an exam? I am so confused.

Any other alternatives? I prefer to write online but, thinking of finding somewhere to go and write in person. I'm in Vancouver, tips welcomed :')

Hi guys-

I had my first midterm scheduled for 8pm tonight and I was on trying to resolve technical issues from 7:57pm to 10:15pm. First, I used my personal MacBook Air and was unable to reach the invigilator until 8:20pm due to programs not opening. Then, after much attempt, they connected me with a tech agent at 9pm. They said there was an unknown issue that was making it hard for them to open the needed materials. They asked if there were any other devices in the house, so I used my father’s new Apple desktop. I got pretty far this time (she asked for 360 scans of room, etc). Randomly she said that the wifi was slow and that we would not be able to proceed due to it. I asked her what my options were, as I technically have high-speed internet but just live rurally, and she said to “fix your wifi” and “reschedule.” I have done online school from home from Western, Queen’s, and U of Alberta with no problem.

I am wondering if anyone else has rescheduled an exam and been able to do it within 10 days- say, the same day? I have a conditional acceptance to a master’s program and am on a very tight timeline (no time to review between now and 10 days from now). I also live out of province so can’t write the exams in person.

What should I do? Contact my marker? I’m thinking of calling Athabasca directly tomorrow.

Any advice is extremely appreciated!

Sincerely,
A very frustrated student

When they calculate your GPA is it ALL courses over all years and all schools you’ve attended in post secondary, or is it only the last 10 courses or something ?

I’m fully online and registered with disability services. Family of mine in Saskatchewan who are also registered with disability services have gotten grants or refunds for school devices such as laptops or iPads and have had them fully covered. I have an outdated computer that can struggle with class work and am wondering if Alberta also has some sort of program to help me get a new computer or at least cover part of it

My tutor never marked my final report, worth 40%. Like fully not marked at all, not even a placeholder grade or anything lmao.

I’m following up and doing the proper things and whatever I’m just mad I gotta do this extra work now lol. My course contract ended Mar 31.