When Pam Virk-Paul signed up for Birmingham City University’s Digital Marketing Short Course in January 2025, she had no idea of the greater significance of her enrolment.
In fact, she became the 100th learner to enrol on BCU’s Short Course programme. We spoke to Pam about her experience of the course and how it feels to be a centenarian!
Birmingham City University’s Short Course programme has, in a period of just over 12 months, become one of the most highly-regarded regional providers of upskilling and bite-size ‘micro-credential’ training provision.
With BCU’s portfolio of Short Courses available in specialist fields as wide-ranging as Marketing, Workplace Health, Python Coding, Immunisation Theory, Media Training, Artificial Intelligence and Professional Studio Recording (among others) there are plenty to choose from.
Each course is delivered by a BCU subject matter expert and leads to official University certification upon completion.
How it happened
Pam Virk-Paul had been aware of the programme for a while and saw an opportunity to gain additional skills and learning to bolster her substantial sales & marketing experience.
“I’d just won a new role as Business Development Manager for a specialist company in a niche market sector," she recalls. "As the first BDM they’d ever had, there was an opportunity to shape the position in my own image, and I came in with a raft of ideas for improvements that I instinctively wanted to action straight away.”
“However, I was wary of adopting a scattergun approach. I wanted to apply a framework to my improvement strategy.”
“I chose to enrol on BCU’s Digital Marketing course as a means of pulling together my thoughts and developing a provable marketing plan for the digital space. I wanted to ensure that my ideas were up-to-date and that I could be clear not just on ‘what’ channels we were prioritising but ‘why’ in each case.”
What did she gain from BCU’s Digital Marketing Short Course?
“After each of the five sessions I went away thinking ‘OK, now I know more things that I can do with this channel’ which was of immense practical value. Going home afterwards with something new in the toolkit that I could put into action the following day was terrifically motivating.”
“The teaching was absolutely top-flight. The other really valuable part of the course was comparing experiences and best practice with my classmates, all of whom were fellow professionals with lead generation responsibilities in their respective organisations.”
“I think my two biggest takeaways from the course were firstly, creating a clear forward digital marketing plan detailing the optimum approaches, for which markets, at which times."
"The second was developing expertise in analytics to measure the effectiveness of each marketing campaign, and effect further improvements if required.”
What are her thoughts on being BCU’s 100th Short Course learner?
“Well I was honoured and delighted to find out, it’s absolutely fantastic to be Birmingham City University’s 100th Short Course customer! I’m really not surprised the programme has come so far, so quickly – everything about the experience was so organised, professional and enjoyable.”
“To be honest, I'd originally intended to sign up for the Digital Marketing course when it ran last year, but the dates didn’t work for me at that time. I’m glad I waited now!”
“So, do I get a prize? A big cheque or something?”
Unfortunately not, Pam. Maybe for our 1000th customer!
