Details on XAMK Courses?

[bdarei]

Can anyone give details on the free online courses XAMK offers? I want to dip my feet into the whole college class thing and I figure since XAMK has some pretty interesting classes I'd try there first.

The only experience I currently have with getting college credits is with Sophia courses. With some Sophia courses, I can read the unit PDFs and pass the course the same day. Are there any XAMK course that just have required reading I can do then do an exam to pass? Or do they have assignments that must be completed too? And do they use a proctoring program for exams?

I am awful at writing essays and would like to avoid that as much as possible. And if they have any invasive proctoring software, I'll have to wait until I can get my crappy laptop up and running for those.

[rachel83az]

XAMK quizzes/exams do not have proctoring. They promote honesty with tight timers on the quizzes/exams. You usually get an average of 1-2 minutes per question, but it depends on the teacher. For instance, for a 10-question quiz, you usually get 10 minutes to complete everything. For a 40 question exam, you might get an hour for the whole thing. Again, this varies.

Some of them do require essays/similar projects. Read the course description first to see if it mentions these. For instance, their Strategic Management course ( https://www.xamk.fi/en/open-amk-courses/...5-ects-cr/ ) says:

The completion of the course is based on the student's own active work; familiarisation with materials, answering exams, carrying out written work and peer reviews in an electronic workshop. Course schedules must be followed. More detailed instructions on the course's Learn website.

The assessment is based on the total score collected by the student from the exams, written assignment and peer review they have completed. The score given by the written assignment and peer review is determined by the automation of the Learn page of the course.

The intro to video games certificate courses require a couple of easy opinion essays (favorite game, what you play now, stuff like that) with pretty lenient pass/fail grading, a few quizzes/exams, and also (obviously) video games project files. I.E., creating a character in Blender or programming a short game in Unity. The certificate is unlike the other XAMK courses and is not indicative of the XAMK experience.

[bdarei]

Thank you! I missed that the information on the course was in the Assessment part for the course. And now I don't have to worry about getting my laptop set up to take the exams!

[rachel83az]

Also, don't worry too much about the essays/papers either. With most of the courses, you can pass even without doing well on the essay. I happen to know Strategic Management relies mainly on the paper, but I just passed International Business where there was a paper as part of the course. But you didn't have to turn it in if you didn't care about not getting an A in the class.

[bdarei]

Also, don't worry too much about the essays/papers either. With most of the courses, you can pass even without doing well on the essay. I happen to know Strategic Management relies mainly on the paper, but I just passed International Business where there was a paper as part of the course. But you didn't have to turn it in if you didn't care about not getting an A in the class.

That's good to know, thank you!

Do you know if the International Business course is on the transcript as a graded course? It looks like it says the assessment is 0-5, which might count as a grade? Or does the grade for the paper just add to the total score to pass/fail like Sophia?

[carrythenothing]

https://www.xamk.fi/en/open-university-o...-sciences/

See the "Grading" section

Completed courses are graded on the scale 1 – 5 or with H “accepted”.

[bdarei]

https://www.xamk.fi/en/open-university-o...-sciences/

See the "Grading" section

Completed courses are graded on the scale 1 – 5 or with H “accepted”.

Under that, it says:

The Finnish Grading Scale (5-H) / The ECTS Grading Scale (A-F)
5 = excellent: outstanding performance with only minor errors A
4 = very good: above average but with some errors B
3 = good: generally sound work with a number of notable errors C
2 = satisfactory: fair but with significant shortcomings D
1 = sufficient: performance meets the minimum criteria E
0 = fail: some more work required before the credit can be awarded FX
0 = fail: considerable further work is required F
H = accepted

That makes me wonder if a course that's using the 0-5 scale would translate into A-F on a transcript?

[carrythenothing]

No, it'll have the Finnish system. You'd need to get the transcript evaluated for an A-F grade.