Coopersmith

[shaas]

Hi Everyone:

I happened along this thread. As a Coopersmith insider, I’d like to explain a few things:

I see a comment about our disorganization online from a few years back. This is accurate. We started back in 2009 and started developing courses in 2012 (we got our first NCCRS credit recommendations in 2013). For the first several years, every exam we offered was in person. (Incidentally, though I realize it’s easy to make claims on the Internet, but please believe me when I say we’ve serviced roughly 10,000 unique exam takers (not exams – exam TAKERS; I’m talking about unique people). So, we’re not exactly new or inexperienced.)

While we operated almost exclusively in person, we were approached from time to time with requests from people who were referred by their Excelsior or TESU advisors (or similar). At first, we told them they’d have to get a proctor at a local school or library. Managing these clients were more trouble than their revenues were worth, but we did it to keep the college advisors happy more than anything. 

In 2017, we decided to go online before we had really built the infrastructure, again, just to give people who wanted to take our exams a better option than going to a library. We then made the decision to build a better site and online platform. We experimented with various learning management systems and proctoring solutions and eventually chose Talent LMS and ProctorU (I could tell you horror stories about other platforms we tried, but I’m far too nice… ?). It took until earlier this year to go live with our current site and platform (https://www.coopersmithcc.net/). Though I've posted on this forum before, this is the first time I can post with a site and platform I'm really proud of.

Most of our clients still take exams in person, but that’s gone from 99% a couple of years ago to something like 75% today. As with the rest of the world, I expect online to continue to increase as a percentage of the business.

What we offer: We’re really not JUST here for existing Excelsior or TESU or COSC students to fill out their pre-existing plans (though we’re happy to help if that’s what the student needs). We also can counsel people on setting up and executing degree plans from zero to Master’s degree (not all through us, obviously). As our name implies, we originally started as an educational consulting company, not just credit-by-exam.

For example, we’re really excited to soon be launching a “feeder” program for Georgia Tech’s Online MS in Analytics program (https://www.gatech.edu/academics/degrees...-analytics). We put together all of the prerequisites for this program in a more robust course form than many of our courses and have engaged a Data Science professor to help administer those courses and to provide student support. More on that in the next few months, but the courses have received unofficial approval from NCCRS.

Who we are: We’re a family business and certainly not a “big” organization, but we’re more than just 1 or 2 people. We have 6 people answering the phone (some more than others… ?) and at least 20 off-and-on course developers.

Why use Coopersmith: Well, as the great Omar Little (from The Wire) might say “That’s up to y’all, really.” But I’ll tell you what we do offer:

Experience: Personally, I’ve been a distance education administrator for almost 20 years (since long before it was cool). I can’t state my other affiliations for convoluted reasons, but they can be Googled relatively easily.

Relationship with NCCRS: We have an excellent one, and they’ve shown that they’ll go to bat for our students where there are gray areas.

We’ll communicate with you: I’m not saying I have the time to chat about the weather all day, but we don’t ignore people. Call and we’ll speak to you on the phone; email and we’ll respond within 1 business day. We’re not a faceless giant organization that budgets a zillion of dollars on marketing in the hopes of generating 1.2 zillion dollars in revenue from enough clients to populate India. We deal with people as individuals. We have no outside investors, no shareholders to satisfy and all the people who work with us full time are invested in the success of the organization.

We’re reasonable people: Did you have a problem with your Internet connection during your exam? Did your payment go through twice because you accidentally refreshed the page during processing? Did you order the wrong course by mistake? Did you simply change your mind about something? Just shoot us an email and we’ll fix it (within reason, of course). We’re not going to refer you to our refunds department and then let you cool your heels for 6-8 weeks. We also don’t outsource our tech support to east Asia. If you email us or call us, you’re going to write or speak with a stakeholder (and probably a family member). I’m not saying we’re perfect (we’re not) and I’m not saying we’ve never had an unsatisfied customer, but I am saying that we’ll fix it – whatever “it” is. The only thing we can’t “fix” is that we can’t make a failing grade into a passing grade just because you studied really hard or were convinced that you knew the subject very well (don’t ask…).

Oh, and speaking of which: unpublished benefit (we can’t advertise this for technical reasons… okay, not that technical, but I’m not at liberty to explain at this point): If you do fail an exam (and, let’s face it, if nobody ever failed an exam, it would mean your exam isn’t an academically honest representation of a college course), we’ll let you take it up to twice more at no additional Coopersmith fee (though additional proctoring fees to ProctorU would be necessary for each proctoring session).

Finally, about the referral program mentioned on this site, it’s not credit towards a Coopersmith exam – it’s cash. You sign up as an affiliate (free); you refer someone to us; s/he puts your name in the referrer box, and you get a check (assuming the payment goes through, obviously). Why do we do this? Well, to get people to refer their friends, of course.  

And if you’re still not convinced how dedicated we are to making Coopersmith the best it can be, consider his: It’s noontime on a June Sunday. It’s 77 degrees outside and sunny; and I’m in my office typing this. Res ipsa loquitur.

Stephen Haas