Whatis meant by 'assessmant college'?...

and what is the advantage of attending one? Thank you.

 

"Assessment college" most likely means a college that gives credit for passing exams, or preparing portfolios of experience that demonstrates the experience is equivalent to college courses. A pure assessment college would not teach any classes.

The advantage is that if you have the right background knowledge, it would be faster, less expensive, and less boring to obtain a degree through assessment than through sitting in a seat listening to lectures.

 

An "assessment college" will review & accept credit from "outside" sources (CLEP, DANTES, previous courses, etc.) and apply them towards a degree. I believe that Excelsior College used that approach until they recently started offering courses of their own.

Just be forewarned......I can't think of any legitimately accredited schools right now that are strictly assessment schools.

 

Well, yes and no. Excelsior, TESC, and COSC will still award degrees based on learning done elsewhere. But now they offer degrees with courses as well.

 

Another distinction...

Assessment colleges are generous in receiving transfer credit AND testing AND portfolio credit. Most other colleges limit the amount that may be applied: Some none, others from 30 to 120 semester credits. For example, even though Ohio University offers external degrees and is unusually generous in the amount of testing matriculants may have accepted, it requires (I think) that 45 quarter credit hours be taken through Ohio.

The spirit of the 60s must be credited here. As the founding president of Excelsior College (then Regents) famously said, [someone help me out with the words here! their web site is not Safari (a Mac browser) friendly]


-Orson

 

What about WGU?

 

Interesting

bruce

I agree with MHS. Western Governors University is entirely assessment based. They rely on no coursework except for that coursework which is required as the assessment. If that didn't make much sense consider the following;

You want to issue a degree in money-changing. You have two bright students. One of them can demonstrate her ability to change money. The other can not do so right now, but shows real promise (he gets some of the numbers right some of the time). You agree with the first student that if she successfully completes ten transactions in a proctored environment (with you watching) that she should get the degree. You tell the second student that he isn't really qualified to change money right now but that if he comes back in six months you'll test him again to see where he is. You provide the second student with a few ideas of where he can gain the needed experience/knowledge and simply hand the degree to the first one.

Western Governors University does just that. With a stroke of the pen they have taken decades of part-time (one or two courses per semester) classes in persuit of a degree for hundreds of thousands of people. They have replaced the coursework with a requirement that one be excellent at money-changing, or computers, or english. (They don't really offer a degree in money-changing; this is simply referring back to my example.) If you can demonstrate proper judgement in handling your business and you meet the requirements, you get a degree.

Western Governors University does not offer degrees based on courses or credits or class-time. They offer degrees by proving mastery of a domain of knowledge.

And it's not just as simple as money-changing.

The degree programs at WGU are structured around the same distribution requirements that all traditional degree programs require. You are required to demonstrate (in a proctored testing environment) skills such as Quantitative Analysis (algebra, math, calculation, etc.) and knowledge of the Humanities and Sciences.

Then you reach the core requirements for your program. Each body of knowledge is broken down into subdomains and even further into specific requirements.

For instance:
All materials are taken from www.wgu.edu unless otherwise noted.

The requirements for earning the Bachelors of Science in Computer Information Systems is broken down into several domains of knowledge.
Ex.

CIS Information Technology Management
Software Engineering and Development
Leadership and Professionalism
Upper-Division Collegiate Reasoning and Problem-Solving Skills

Information Technology Core
Quantitative Literacy Skills
Language and Communication Skills
General Education Distribution

Each domain is broken down into several subdomains.
Ex.

CIS IT Management
CIS-Programming Fundamentals
CIS-Operating Environments Fundamentals
CIS-Systems Analysis Fundamentals
CIS-Database Administration Fundamental Skills and Knowledge
CIS-Information Technology Project Management Skills
CIS-Networking Fundamentals
CIS-Process Improvement & Software Development Lifecycle

Each subdomain is broken down into requirements.
Ex.
CIS - Database Administration Fundamental Skills and Knowledge

demonstrate the ability to normalize a complex database.
explain conceptual/logical data modeling.
design and implement a database.
demonstrate database monitoring and tuning.
plan and conduct database maintenance.
demonstrate database security administration.
explain SQL-query optimization.
describe and conduct database transaction management and currency control (how many can access at the same time).

The strength of this approach is that it takes what you know and build upon it. The granularity with which the subjects can be approached in this manner is almost mind-boggeling. This is somewhat akin to a computer programmer breaking down the system requirements into functional requirements and then finally into sequences of operations and even further into operations themselves. The fact that this can be done shows that education is no longer about fashioning a student into the image of his instructor, but is more about providing the student at whatever stage of advancement opportunities to gain selected attributes of the instructor. This is about choice. If you have the knowledge, you can choose to take classes to earn the degree or you can choose to demonstrate that knowledge to earn that degree.

There are drawbacks, of course...

If you don't have a pretty vast array of knowledge already, this segmentation can be overwhelming. WGU attempts to mitigate that by sharing responsibility with you for your degree. They assign a mentor to you who is responsible to work with you to map out your requirements and guide you towards your degree.

If you don't have a lot of knowledge in a specific domain, it can be tough passing the domain assessments. WGU attempts to mitigate this somewhat by providing resources to help you study and learn the material. While I have a pretty good general body of knowledge, I have had to use this process in several domains so far, to gain the knowledge necessary to pass the domain.

If you're not self-motivated you'll wake up one afternoon to the sound of your mentor calling you trying to keep you on task. A student who is not willing to study whenever or wherever, or at the least in a consistant manner, may have difficulty working through the domains. It is not that the domains are insurmountable, rather, it is that the domains require attention to the details that undergird them and the level of attention required may be difficult for some people. WGU attempts to mitigate that somewhat by providing a number of different education mediums of different types of learners. One person learns primarily by listening to lectures (audial learner) might select a book on tape series for himself while someone really much better at reading and retrieving (visual learner) might find herself in a nice hot bath with a stack of manuals.

The final weakness of this type of education is perhaps the worst. If you've got a photographic memory and can remember dates and times and facts and figures and everyone around you thinks that you're sharp as a tack but you work at Walmart (not knocking Walmart, I've worked for them before - good company, pretty good management overall) because you don't have a piece of paper that says your name in funny little letters with a big gold seal across it, if that's the case you might just be able to finish a degree in business in several months. While that sounds positive, think with me about something. Why do most people go back to college? Because they need a piece of paper? Or is it to attract the sense of learning and life that we all felt when we were young and learning a mile a minute? If you think that you're going to come out of an assessment based degree program a changed person, somewhat smarter, with a firmer grasp on different domains in your specialty and you happen to fit the description above, look out because you'll be in for a shock. You'll have the knowledge, but you won't really be able to point to a teaching moment in which the teacher said something that struck a chord and in which learning began. If you were a 75 year old widow who had worked in business for 30 years and knew everything about accounting and management, you'd have that paper after taking some exams. Would you know more the moment after the degree was conferred than you did before? Nope. And that's the primary problem.

To mitigate this somewhat, WGU has placed a special requirement in at least the CIS degree called a portfolio requirement. This portfolio is a critical self-examination of your skills based primarily by looking at what things you've actually accomplished in the "real-world". If you know how to sew a pair of pants, that's great. If you can prove by examination that you know the stitches, that's fine. To graduate we want to see a pair. It doesn't even have to be your finest, but you've got to have done the work, you have to be able to point to how you decided to use said fabric and a particular cut, you have to be able to point all this information back to your goal in life - to become a master designer. And then if you say that's your goal, you've got to produce some designs. And so on.

I don't know about the business program but I know that the education program has a similar requirement. In order to graduate you must successfully teach a live audience of faculty members. I guess if you want to be a teacher there really is no better test.

I think that it's high time that the entire educational community gets off its laurals and works harder to make education meaningful in today's society. Sure, I became literate through my elementary and secondary education, but I could have done so much more with a personalized plan for education rather than a generalized course of study. I have two brothers-in-law who (while they admittedly are smarter than I am) are 15 and 19 and are respectively a sophmore and a senior in college. I don't think their innate intelligence would have shown through quite as brightly if they had attended the public school system (of which I am a mostly satisfied product). They were blessed with a mother who chose, among all the dozens of options out there, to educate her children at home and who decided early that each child was special and deserved to be communicated with on his or her level.

Communication to the least common denominator only serves to lower the mean.

I love education and I'm beginning to believe that I might be successful as a lobbiest for better education.

Thanks for letting me rant.

Jacob Metro