What Happens in the Room
Sessions are held in a small group of no more than 30 students. It is an intentionally intimate setting built around discussion, practical work, and shared experience rather than passive listening.
Discussion and debate
Sessions are built around conversation, shared thinking, and debate. Your experiences and perspectives are actively part of the learning. Some students take detailed notes, others prefer to listen and absorb, and both approaches are equally valid. You will find what works for you.
Practical activities
You will work with other students in pairs and small groups, practising skills, exploring concepts, and learning by doing as much as by listening. Counselling is a practical discipline and the training reflects that from early on.
Observation and reflection
Some sessions involve observing demonstrations of counselling techniques, then reflecting on what you noticed. This builds your ability to think analytically about human behaviour, which is central to the work.
Guest speakers
Throughout the course we bring in practitioners working in the field. These sessions give you a real window into what a career in counselling actually looks like day to day, across a range of settings and specialisms.
Everything is there when you need it
One of the things students consistently tell us makes a real difference is knowing they do not have to catch everything in the room. After each session the tutor’s PowerPoint slides are available through the student portal, along with lesson notes and supporting resources from the online library. You can revisit the material in your own time, at your own pace.
On top of that, tutors regularly record short video recaps after sessions. These are informal, focused summaries of the key points from the week, particularly useful if something did not quite land in the room or if life got in the way and you need a quick refresh before the next session.
How you take it all in matters
People absorb information in different ways. Some prefer to read, some learn best by doing, some need to hear something explained before it clicks. Understanding your own learning style can make a real difference to how you experience the course and how much you get from it. We will come back to this in the next topic, where you will get the chance to discover your own learning style using a model used by organisations across the UK.
When you are ready, mark this lesson as complete and move on.