I’m no stranger to Google search engine results being a mixture of paid ad listing and listings that naturally pop up on the first page due to their ranking by Google. I wanted a good deal, so I clicked on some of the paid ads which pop up right at the top and here’s where my confusions began.
I found website that offered BSL courses which seemed like a bargain, I could apparently sign up online and learn BSL Level 1 and BSL Level 2 and get certified at an 89% discounted price of just £14.00 – This was “a deal not to miss” I thought. But my gut was saying “you get what you pay for”. So, I investigated further to find out what I’m getting for my money, this course was a video-based course, and it was accredited by CPD, and from visual memory of doing other CPD based courses in the past, I noticed this CPD logo looked different. Now my spider senses really started to tingle, but I thought meh I’ll just click another course provider.
Back to Google I went and made my search, and as before I got lots of Academy’s and Schools of “excellence” pop up at the top. I clicked on the ones that looked interesting and again there where some amazing offers, some even cheaper than the first one I saw. But again, the same place was accrediting these places. I kind of went down the rabbit hole after this, I really needed to know what’s going on. I’ll let you know what I found out, but first let me tell you what I did next.
Leaving behind these courses which seemed a little bogus, I moved on to checking out the natural listing on Google and I came across British Sign Language course providers who seem to be the real deal, there was still a huge mix of prices and course lengths to choose from, but at least these places looked like they were specialists in teaching British Sign Language.
Many of the more specialist British Sign Language course providers where accredited by the actual CPD logo I am used to seeing as well as an accreditor called Signature and iBSL. Courses provided by these centres where of different lengths and as I wanted to learn online, I looked for centre’s which offered evening BSL courses online.
I found many that took 15 to 20 weeks to teach BSL, the problem with that for me was that I may not be able to commit for so many weeks. I eventually found a place which offered BSL Level 1 course online for 5 weeks in the evening. And as I like a good deal, this place was offering the first sign language lesson for free. I was sold! If you want to Learn Sign Language Online, this is the place to do it.
Now going back to the bogus training sites, when I went down the rabbit hole, I found that many of the British Sign Language courses on offer from these companies was pre-recorded video-based stuff which was being shared by all the companies, these companies also offered courses in every aspect of life you can imagine. There’s even a course on one of the sites on how to become a witch! Now that CPD logo that was causing me to question things, at closer inspection it turns out they’re called CPD Group and have nothing to do with the actual CPD accreditors. The CPD group provide free accreditations to online “training” sites which co-incidentally offer courses which the CPD group have created, and they sell on a wholesale basis to these “training” sites that love to give themselves names like Academy, or International School of… or Oxford & Cambridge blah blah blah.
Personally, I think it’s a not right to be filling the internet up with sub-standard courses and fake certificates, it creates confusion and genuine people who want to learn a subject will end up buying these cheap courses and not really learning anything. And I guess due to the price, people will most likely not even bother chasing them for a refund.
Here this, one of these fake Academy’s was even selling student ID’s so you can get discounts. Isn’t that like borderline fraud?
Anyways, I’m glad I didn’t end up buying these too good to be true online BSL courses and instead found an expert to learn from.
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