Saylor has 2 new ACE credited courses

Discussion in 'CLEP, DANTES, and Other Exams for Credit' started by Penpusher, Jul 4, 2014.

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  1. Penpusher

    Penpusher New Member

    Hi,

    I haven't seen this in the forum yet. Saylor has two new courses you can use to get ACE credit by passing a proctored exam:

    - General Chemistry I
    - Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology

    They are probably not the easiest courses you will ever take, but beggars can't be choosers. If you're after a cheap degree, that's 2 additional courses that will only cost you the ProctorU fee of $25. I really like that.

    Go Saylor! More of that!
     
  2. Penpusher

    Penpusher New Member

    Although I'm replying to myself here, this might still be interesting to others. I took the Chemistry test without problems, and it was accredited by ACE without a glitch. It's showing up in "My courses" in my ACE account, just like, e.g. the ALEKS and TEEX courses. So, that's another 3 credits for mere $25.
     
  3. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

    NICE!! I love Saylor, I hope they expand the crap out of this kind of learning and shove the $99/month company out of the way.
     
  4. Shawn Ambrose

    Shawn Ambrose New Member

    Agree - what's really cool is that my university is an NCCRS partner school - I confirmed with our registrar is that we'll accept the NCCRS Saylor courses. Since our summer sessions are very limited - have a nice tool to use for students who want to work ahead, or catch-up.
     
  5. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    LOL. I think Straighterline is reasonably priced for a for-profit company. Saylor is a non-profit organization that depends on donations. The one main issue I have with SL is the company they chose for their labs. With the cost of the labs for A&P I and II and Microbiology, you might as well take the courses at a local community college or one of the 2-year colleges in New Mexico.
     
  6. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Well, sort of. It's bankrolled by Michael Saylor, a tech billionaire. So it's not like they need constant donations from Viewers Like You.
     
  7. Penpusher

    Penpusher New Member

    I think that's exactly what Saylor does. When I booked my exam with ProctorU, I saw that proctored exams are available for the following Saylor courses:

    BIO101B: Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology
    BUS203: Principles of Marketing
    BUS204: Business Statistics
    BUS205: Business Law and Ethics
    BUS208: Principles of Management
    BUS210: Corporate Communications
    BUS300: Operations Management
    BUS301: Human Resources Management
    BUS303: Strategic Information Technology
    BUS305: Small Business Management
    BUS401: Management Leadership
    BUS402: Project Management
    BUS501: Strategic Management
    CHEM101: General Chemistry I
    CS101: Introduction to Computer Science
    CS201: Elementary Data Structures
    CS202: Discrete Structures
    CS301: Computer Architecture
    CS302: Software Engineering
    CS303: Algorithms
    CS304: Compilers
    CS305: Web Development
    CS401: Operating Systems
    CS403: Introduction to Modern Database Systems
    CS404: Programming Languages
    CS405: Artificial Intelligence
    CS406: Information Security
    CS408: Advanced Artificial Intelligence
    CS409: Cryptography
    CS410: Advanced Databases
    MA001: Beginning Algebra
    MA005: Calculus I
    POLSC201: Introduction to Western Political Thought
    PSYCH404: Psychotherapy

    Credit aligned so far are
    - the 2 biology and chemistry courses (ACE)
    - BUS2xx, CS101, MA00x and POLSC201 (NCCRS)
    - 12 TECEP, UExcel and CLEP courses that don't show up in this list

    With all those business and computer science courses, it looks like Saylor might be about to set up proper majors in those areas.
     
  8. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

    I follow Saylor closely, and have for a while. In fact, they even follow me on Twitter and Facebook page :)
    Last year I started using Saylor in my personal homeschool programs. My only issue, is that their free courses don't have quiz/exam keys. So, for my son's 7th grade math class, it was a PITA to work through every problem. When I contacted them, they had no plans for adding keys. That's a paddlin.
    We saw an enormous expansion of Khan academy as they went from tutor to curriculum provider, and I think Saylor will need to go in that direction. It's excellent that they are credit-aligned, and it's excellent that they have credit options with NCCRS and ACE, but there are gaps that they need to fill as they move forward or they're going to lose the group that they started out attracting: users of the curriculum for non-credit purposes. Sometimes growth kills a company.
     
  9. Penpusher

    Penpusher New Member

    After a quick glance at Khan Academy, it seems to me that the target groups are different for Khan and Saylor: Khan seems to teach mainly at high-school level, whereas Saylor aims at university level. This might (in my opinion: should) lead to different styles of teaching: Whereas school teaching is more explanatory and responding to students' questions and needs, university teaching is more of the "here's what you have to know, and if you don't understand it on the spot, work on it until you finally understand it" type. University is not school - at university, material is harder and pace is faster.

    In my opinion, a tutoring model would not work for Saylor, as they would have to employ proper academic staff for this tutoring. Some secondary school teacher probably wouldn't be qualified enough to explain, e.g. why the 5D ground state of iron consists of 25 microstates or how many three-dimensional irreducible representations there are in the D3h character table. (Both are actual questions from Saylor's exam in Physical Chemistry II.) In Saylor's current setup, they only need academic staff in the development phase of a course; once the syllabus is developed and the course is set up, all course maintenance is of a technical nature.
     
  10. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

    No. This isn't what I meant. Khan's tutoring was literally, tutoring. It's now a curriculum you can use from start to finish with interactive quizzes and learning map. It doesn't matter though. My point is that Saylor is doing big things but has missed little things, like providing answer keys for their existing products. Which I find disappointing because it's and unfocused.
     

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