Where, when and for how long
Studying by distance learning is extremely flexible. It gives you a huge amount of control over where you study, when you can start, and how long your studies will take you. You can study anywhere in the world, start at any time and study a subject over a few months or up to two years – whichever suits you best.
You can study anywhere you like. You may find it useful to have a space set aside where you can keep your course notes and work undisturbed when you need to, but this can be at home or at your employer's premises. Then when you do want to study somewhere else, say on a train or at a library, it's easy to pick out just the course books you need and take them with you – especially if you've chosen to have them as pdf files.
You can begin your studies whenever you like.
Most of the CIPS units are going to take about seventy hours of study for the course book and activities. You will then need to do more study on top of that for your coursework and background reading. For lower-level units this might amount to twenty hours or so; higher-level units may require forty or fifty hours, a lot depends on your experience and the reading that you normally do anyway as part of your job.
If you are doing a unit where you are preparing for a full-size case study or a WBA project, your total study time for that will be big, so if you can you should take these units on their own so that they don't interfere with your other studies.
