TAFE NSW Ultimo Campus - Cert 4 for Web Development

I lasted only a week and a day after enrolling in the Certificate IV in Web Development. Yet, I think it is worth sharing my experience and recommending this course at TAFE Ultimo.

To understand the context of my recommendation, it helps to know my background. I am a former office worker whose tech skills were limited to basic Excel and Word. I enrolled in the course to see if understanding the basics of coding would give me a better handle on AI.

The course was full-time—three full days on campus—and comprehensive. It covered topics such as HTML, CSS, databases, and programming fundamentals.

I was in a small class of only nine students. One tip for anyone interested: you don't need to bring your own laptop unless you want to, as every student is provided with a desktop. However, if you bring your laptop, the same set up made it easier to finish exercises at home.

The most important take away for me was the teachers in the course were great. Pinky, Michael, and Andrew were fantastic—friendly, approachable, and truly knowledgeable.

The class format was very effective. The teachers explained key concepts briefly before turning the rest of the session over to practical exercises to reinforce the concepts and coding habits. Throughout these exercises, they walked around the classroom, ready to help and offer advice.

For a non-techie like me, there was a strange sense of satisfaction in getting a simple snippet of code to run as expected—even basic things like "Hello World" where I had to troubleshoot a missing semicolon to get it working.

To be honest, as a mature student, I found it somewhat daunting. Each subject has assignments and assessments, so the certificate is not designed to be a walk in the park. It calls for real commitment to complete homework and turn in assignments. By the end of the course, the expectation is that you will have built enough practical skills to build a functioning website.

I ultimately decided to withdraw because I had too many outside commitments and couldn't dedicate enough time to the workload. Plus I figured web development was probably something beyond me and would test the absolute limit of my patience if I had to tweak bits and pieces of different things to make a website looks that bit nicer.

I found the withdrawal process very straightforward—I only had to submit a single form. TAFE's refund policy was also fair. Rather than applying a heavy penalty for leaving after the term started, TAFE calculated my refund based on the exact number of classes and days I attended.

Even with my brief time at TAFE Ultimo, I strongly recommend this course to anyone looking to pick up web development skills or explore a new career. The teachers were great, and the content was practical and relevant. It requires work and commitment, but if you pass, you will walk away with genuinely valuable skills.

One more thing... The course fee came to $2300 for the semester. Just the cost of one subject in Uni these days. Personally, think it is a bargain relative to the skills that can be picked up. I remember a few years ago the coding schools were all the rage and they cost a bomb. Plus my brief experience there suggest to me that the TAFE system is serious about imparting useful skills/knowledge and the quality of teaching is better than some tutors I had in Uni back in the day.

Note: I used AI to clean up the grammatical errors in the write up.