Excelsior BS/CIS degree without use of ICCP exams?

Anyone have suggestions specific distance learning online courses and non-ICCP exams that meet the upper and lower division technology core degree requirements?

 

alternatives to ICCP exams for Excelsior, BS-CIS

There are posts at Excelsior's EPN web site that Athabasca U. allows students to take challenge exams for nearly all the courses they offer. I haven't tried this but other students have recommended this.

From DANTES:
Intro to Computing
MIS

From TESC:
There are a number of CS exams and courses offered

calidris, BS-CIS Excelsior Apr 04

 

Re: alternatives to ICCP exams for Excelsior, BS-CIS

So, all the Excelsior CIS core requirements normally fullfilled by the ICCP exams could be met by taking DANTES and TESC exams, plus challenging or completing online courses at Athabasca?

There are so many complaints about ICCP exams being out of date and extremely difficult to prepare for due to lack of suitable preparation material that maps to the exam content.
I don't want to waste time studying for an exam that is counterproductive even if I manage to pass.

 

alternatives to ICCP exams for Excelsior, BS-CIS

I'm sure the answer is "Yes, one can find alternatives to the ICCP exams" but I took mostly ICCP exams to complete the CS requirements for my BS-CIS from Excelsior. I think the ICCP exams are a reasonable alternative (and not expensive) for experienced IS people but they do take a bit of work to prepare for. I left posts at Excelsior's EPN web site and also at Yahoo groups Excelisior-CIS group for what I used to pass each exam in the datatbase.

I'm now enrolled in the SWT Discrete Math correspondence course which I'm taking to fulfill a prerequsite for the MS-CS program that I am thinking of applying to and finding having to mail in homework and take a mid-term and final exam very onerous. I wish I have found an inexpensive way to "test out" this requirement. I still have to take Data Structures and Formal Languages so will be looking for a way to test out these requirements later.

By the way, I forgot to mention that Excelsior accepts Ohio Unv Intro to Microprocessors as credit for Computer Architecture. ICCP no longer offers an exam to fulfill this requirement (I think it used to offer an Assembly Language exam).

 

This will give you all the schools that have courses available
that you are looking for:

http://distancelearn.excelsior.edu/

 

I tend to agree with calidris that the ICCP exams may be worth your time. They are outdated, and they tend to present a mainframe/centralized view of IT systems, but if you have some background in this arena, you may be able to cheaply and quickly get the credit. If your backgound is purely PC programming (of the C++, VB, or java sort), these may not worth the effort. My own background was a mixture of network engineer (primarily in the PC LAN/WAN world), PC technician, PC programmer (java), with some exposure to terminal-based midrange computing. In many respects, this was an ideal mix of skills fo the tests.

I took the ICCP exams because they were essentially free to me (I had enrolled under the old flat fee structure).

I found that the Bird publications test software (the cheaper option) was woefully inadequate, but it did probably give me an extra 10% or so cushion on the exams. It's possible that I could have failed one or more tests without this cushion. Additionally, I read at last one textbook for each subject. So I probably spent $150 per test in prep material. I found a few of the tests to be very easy and a few very hard. I didn't really think any of the tests were particularly well constructed. The big advantage was I could take a test once every 1 to 2 weeks if I was properly motivated.

I am not opposed to the idea of you taking courses or other standardized tests (I took a few community college courses for IT elctivs and to make my transcript look more like CS rather than CIS) and tests for the non-IT requirements. I just think that if you have the appropriate background (so you don't have to learn a bunch of new material), the ICCP exams remain a potentially fast and inexpensive option.

Oh yeah, and because the tests aren't particularly good, it helps if you are a good test-taker (aka good guesser). I generally only "knew" 60% of the answers, but guessed another 20% correctly (by narrowing down the answers) to obtain a passing grade.

 

Since my background is recent, I would rather not study to learn how things used to be done 10 years ago.
If I am going to spend time studying I would rather it be very current content.
I can see how someone who has been in IT for the last 10 or 20 years could use their experience from the past to pass those exams with little new study, but studying to "learn" outdated material seems counterproductive.

 

Speaking of Athabasca University (SP?)

Has anyone actually taken a course from Athabasca? If so, what was the experience like?

Did you recieve reimbursement from the VA for that class? How did that go?

Thanks,

David Taylor
MCSE+I NT4, MCSE/A W2K, CCA
A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
...and Excelsior BS-CIS hopeful.