General certificate

General certificate
General Certificate in Online Counselling Skills (Module 1)
Validated by CPCAB (Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awards Body)

Course Director:	Gill Jones
Technology Director:	Alex Chew
Tutorial team includes:	Jane Hallett, Gemma Mason, Rosemarie Court
Courses begin:	September and April of each year
Criteria for entry to this course:	Recognised counselling or psychotherapy qualification (diploma level or equivalent). Computer with internet connection and email address.

Learning Online to Counsel Online

This Introductory Course is designed help counsellors and other therapists become familiar with the technology and relationship skills needed to counsel online. Much of the work is group-based. Relationships are made with other students and tutors who do not meet face to face during the Course. Course members learn how to create, sustain and end online working relationships by following a timetable of weekly assignments which introduce them to the online counselling environment. The entire Course is run from our campus website.

All the work is carried out using the student's own computer and internet connection - there are no face to face or telephone meetings but regular online meetings are held at pre-arranged times in our website conference rooms which course members are required to attend. Support and feedback is available for all course members from the tutors and there is also a free online student counselling service.

On completion of the Course, students present required pieces of work for assessment by the tutors and they are encouraged to circulate them for other course members to read. Successful students will be awarded the General Certificate in Online Counselling Skills.

It is anticipated that students will spend 8-10 hours a week on this Course. Those who are not very technically proficient may need longer. This is an 8-week course of 65 guided learning hours.

If you want to find out more you can download a Brief Course Guide by clicking here. When you have finished downloading you can save the Guide to your computer, close the screen and you will return to this web page. The Brief Course Guide is a pdf file and you may need to download Acrobat Reader to open it. Again, if you close the window when the download has finished, you will return to this page.

Image of woman at PC If you are not already familiar with sending and receiving emails and file attachments, chatting on Instant Messenger and internet chatrooms, you may want to consider our two-week pre-course preparation (Click the button 'Is this Course for Me'? to find out more.)

If you want to enquire about our pre-course tuition or you have any queries about our General Certificate please click here and email our Admissions Tutor, Anne Stokes. We have been experiencing some problems with emails not getting through to Anne recently. If you haven't received a reply from her within 3 days, please click here and send your query to Gill Jones or alternatively, post Anne a letter to the address at the bottom of the application form.

After this Certificate - What Next?

Some students will want to stop at this point and put their learning into practice. Others may wish to do the Advanced Certificate and Diploma in Online Counselling (see separate pages for outlines of these courses).