Saylor NCCRS-approved Course Review

[HorseManiac]

Hello everyone! Since I just completed the final exam for the Saylor course BUS210: Corporate Communications that is NCCRS-approved, I decided to post a review here for those of you who may be interested in taking advantage of the course/courses in the future. Currently, Saylor offers 3 NCCRS-approved courses (BUS210, BUS205, and POLSC201) that will transfer to the Big 3 (as well as several other schools. Go here for more details on which schools accept these courses....Saylor.org) It's up to you to make sure your school accepts this course. Here's a post from this forum with some more info. http://www.degreeforum.net/general-educa...iness.html

Anyway, I completed the BUS210: Corporate Communications course and here are my thoughts on it.............

Course
BUS210: Corporate Communication « Saylor.org – Free Online Courses Built by Professors
This course is completed completely on your own. There is no instructor/professor. You will be required to create an account with Saylor, which is free. This account allows you to add the course to your account so you can take the quizzes and final exam.

Time Requirement
The Saylor website lists the total required time as 119 hours. That depends on how quickly you work and how fast you can read, take notes, etc. I took 1 month to complete the course and I spent about 7-8 hours/weekday while also studying for a DSST. The time advisories they had listed for each activity were a little on the long side. Most activities didn't take as long for me as they indicated. However, that will probably vary by person.

Resources
The resources for this course are all online and are all linked directly on the website. The resources include readings from a textbook, watching lectures through ItunesU and other sources, youtube videos, and several other online resources. The textbook that the course is based on can be read online or downloaded. As far as I know, you will need Itunes on your computer to view the lectures.

Assessments
There were 15 assessments throughout the course. They included:

“Communication Model Label Assessment”
“Critique a Set of Listening and Reading Habits”
"Email Assessment”
"Memorandum Assessment”
“Business Letter Assessment”
"RÃsumà Assessment"
“Sales Letter Assessment”
“Outlining Assessment”
“Elevator Speech Assessment”
“Nonverbal Communication Assessment”
"Sound Bites Assessment”
"Introducing a Speaker Assessment”
“Negative News Message Assessment”
"Workplace Conflict Assessment”
“Intercultural Communication Assessment”

Several of them were just quizzes, a few required you to write a page/document, and several had you answer questions. No one grades your work so it's up to you to do it correctly, but they do provide examples/answers to check your work with.

Quizzes
At the end of each unit, there is a quiz that you take. I had a hard time with these quizzes. My scores were horrible. I think the best score I got was like 82% and the worst was like 45%. :ack: Anyway, the quizzes have no affect on your final grade so I just viewed them as practice. They can also be attempted more than once, although I never did that. I felt that the quizzes didn't really have questions on things I'd learned in the unit and that the questions were worded funny. Like I said use them as practice.

There are also 2 practice exams. When you are on the main course page and you click on "Final Exam", it brings up to options. One says "Final Exam" and the other says "NCCRS Credit Recommended Exam". By clicking on the "Final Exam" link you will be required to log into your account and then there should be 2 final exams that can be taken as practice. I only took the one marked "PR" because I didn't realize they were both for practice. I figured the one marked "PR" was for practice. I thought the other one was the password protected final exam, but it wasn't.

Obtaining a Proctor
In order to receive college credit for this course, you have to take a proctored final exam. You have 2 choices...you can use ProctorU ($25) or you can get your own proctor. Since my proctor that I use for CLEP/DSST only charges $20/visit, I decided to go that way. I coordinated my CLEP/DSST's so that I can take one test and my final exam each time I go so that I technically only spend $10 for each one. Anyway, here is the information on finding a proctor if you choose to go that route. You will contact your proctor ahead of time (about 1 week ahead of your test date) and the proctor will then contact Saylor and provide them with an ID, name, address, and telephone number. After Saylor verifies your proctor, the proctor will be given an exam password that will allow them to access your exam. And that's about it! A pretty simple process. You can read the other specifics on who can proctor, etc at the link above.

Final Exam
Now, as far as the final exam goes, it is a 50 question exam that must be completed in 2 hours. It is closed book and you must agree to the Saylor honor code that you won't accept any help while taking the exam. I believe you are allowed to have scratch paper, but I didn't use it and never verified it. As far as content, this exam is no cakewalk! I was pretty sure I hadn't passed it and almost didn't. The questions ask you to apply a lot of what you learn to certain scenarios. It does not have straightforward questions. You really need to think about them. In order to pass the exam, you must receive a score of 70% or higher.

Now to access the exam you will have to log into your account, but here's where I had a problem. The page above tells you to access the exam through your Moodle account, however when I did that today the 2 practice exams I listed above were all that was listed. What I found out was that you have to go to the main page of the course, click on "Final Exam" -> "NCCRS Credit Recommended Exam" -> log into your account -> when asked if you want to enroll in the NCCRS course, select "yes" -> accept the Saylor honor code -> and then your proctor will be required to enter their password that they received from Saylor.

Receiving Credit
In order to receive credit, there are a few things you have to do. Obviously, you must pass the final exam. Then after you have completed the exam, your proctor must sign and submit (by email or fax) the Proctor Responsibility Form. Then you will need to request a transcript (free) if you aren't taking anymore courses.

Fee
Saylor requires no fee to take this course. Registering for your account is free as well as requesting a transcript. The only fees you will have are a proctor fee which will either be $25 if you choose to use ProctorU or a fee that your in-person proctor might choose to charge you.

Word of Caution
* After I had finished the exam and pressed "Submit", I received an error message along with a continue button. I pressed "Continue" and was returned to the main screen. If this happens to you, DON'T STRESS OUT. After I went to my grades section, it showed my score and everything was fine.

* If your proctor doesn't mention the Proctor Responsibility Form, then be sure to mention it yourself. It has to be turned in so that you can get credit.

Contact
If you have any questions about the Saylor course that I can't answer or if you have an issues, you can contact Devon Ritter (devon.ritter@saylor.org). He is the contact listed on all the pages about these courses. He is super helpful and he always answered my questions very promptly.

I hope this is helpful to those of you considering this course. This isn't an easy course, but it's doable. I would recommend this course if you need to fulfill Business Communications since there is no cost other than a proctor fee. If anyone has anymore questions, just post them here or shoot me a PM and I'll try my best to answer them!

Now I'm off to get ready for my next Saylor course BUS205: Business Law and Ethics!! eeya:

[mymelody]

Very helpful information, I thank you.:hurray:

[cookderosa]

FANTASTIC exam tutorial!! Thanks! (and congrats!)

[HorseManiac]

@mymelody - Thanks!! Glad you found it helpful!

@cookderosa - Thanks Jennifer!! Hopefully others will be able to take advantage of these courses. They are a great deal!

[HorseManiac]

Ok, so I took the Final Exam for the Saylor course BUS205: Business Law and Ethics so I thought I post an update for any who might be considering this course.

* This is the course....http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus205/

* The time requirement listed on this course is 133 hours, but like I said before this will largely depend on the individual.

* This course had assessments as well. They are ungraded and mostly questions for you to answer.

* The quizzes on this course were WAY easier than the quizzes from Corporate Communications. They were more in-line with what I had been studying which was great. There were Subunit quizzes as well as quizzes at the end of each unit.

* Obtaining a proctor and everything else was the same as my post above.

* Once again, I did receive an error message after I hit submit, so don't worry. Your grade should be fine. Just be sure to log into your account and check.

I didn't do too well on the practice test for this course so I was a little nervous going in. Thankfully, I passed with 76%. Not the best, but it's a pass. These exams are not easy so be sure to prepare very well!!

Well, that's my last Saylor course so I'll update about how requesting a transcript works after I've done that! PM me with any questions.

[HorseManiac]

Ok, so I wanted to update everyone on the process for requesting a saylor transcript. It's a fairly simple process and the transcripts are free (at least at this point). Also, I had my scores sent to TESC who is a partner school with saylor so I can't speak for how the process would work for a non-partner school.

Anyway, all you need to do is print out the transcript request form from here. After you fill it out, you mail it and a pre-addressed, stamped envelope for your school to The Saylor Foundation. The address is on the form. It took about a week for TESC to receive my transcript and they said it will take about 20 days to apply the credits to my degree plan.

I think that's it! If anyone has any questions let me know!

[sung1contrarian]

Hi HorseManiac,

I will be taking the BUS210 final soon and was wondering how close the practice exams available on the Saylor site were to the actual final. Are most questions identical to some on the practice exams? I have been mainly focusing on studying practice exams, quizlets, flash cards, etc., rather than studying the text.

Thanks!

[sung1contrarian]

Just took the BUS210 proctored final and passed with a 86%. Did not read the book or watch any videos but only focused on the practice final exams. So for those of you interested in taking it, just study the practice tests...it can be done!

[bjcheung77]

Just took the BUS210 proctored final and passed with a 86%. Did not read the book or watch any videos but only focused on the practice final exams. So for those of you interested in taking it, just study the practice tests...it can be done!

That's great! Good news. I usually tell people to review as much material as possible and inform them the practice test is where it's at.
If you've got the practice tests down pat, your chances at the real proctored final would be much higher as you know where you stand.

[davewill]

The second final is the actual final if all you want is credit towards one of Saylor's certs. If you pass it, it will show as completed in your profile. For our purposes it makes a great practice test.