Ed4Credit.com has 27 new ACE approved courses

[cookderosa]

Ed4Credit is a new company, founded in 2015. We do have another part to our business that offers not-for-credit vocational courses through Adult Continuing Ed departments of colleges, that's Ed4Online. Ed4Online was founded in 2009. There are a number of education companies that work with community colleges to offer the not-for-credit vocational courses. There is a company called Ed2Go that does, maybe you are thinking of them? They are very big and are owned by Cengage, the textbook company. They have been around a long time.

you're right! It's Ed2Go that I was thinking of. Thanks for clarifying that.

[cookderosa]

I'm a little bit freaked out by the structure of the program. According to the answers they gave me in chat, you can fail the course at every quiz. Each quiz must be passed (2 attempts) at 70% or better or you fail the whole course. There is no "grade" or weight - it's all or nothing. In addition, the final exam must be passed at 50%. This structure is horrible.

"Ava
Hello Jennifer

Jennifer
hello-can you tell me how a course is graded?

Ava
Each module has a quiz with one final exam and all of the modules have two attempts and final has one attempt.

Jennifer
yes- but the syllabus doesn't give any indication to what scores are required on quizzes or final, what % of quizzes and final make up the course grade, or anything.

Ava
Each module you must score a 70 or above and the final must be at least 50.

Jennifer
so it's just pass/fail then?

Ava
Yes, that is correct. That's what will show up on the ACE transcripts.

Jennifer
so I understand, if I do not earn 70% on my first 2 attempts at quiz 1, I have failed the course?

Ava
Yes, that's correct!

Jennifer
ok, thank you for your help today."

[jsd]

Our next round of approvals will be mainly for UL (if ACE agrees) and our focus will be in the Social Sciences. Both my husband and I have degrees in Social Sciences so those are easier for me to "get my head" around. Thanks again for your suggestions!

I have some suggestions for social sciences in this case! Right now, there no options for TESU's "Ethics in the Social Sciences" requirement in their BA Pysch degree, so this would be a great option that would make the degree entirely test-outable (minus the capstone of course).

There's currently only one option for the two required courses "History and Systems of Psychology" and "Physiological Psychology," (and I'm not too keen on the source of those two options).


Similarly, the TESU BA Sociology has a required "Social Theory" course that has no test-out option available, and in general Sociology courses (other than intro) are scarce.

[Ed4Credit]

I'm a little bit freaked out by the structure of the program. According to the answers they gave me in chat, you can fail the course at every quiz. Each quiz must be passed (2 attempts) at 70% or better or you fail the whole course. There is no "grade" or weight - it's all or nothing. In addition, the final exam must be passed at 50%. This structure is horrible. [/I]

Hi Jennifer, Ava was correct in her answers about how our courses currently work. ACE is attempting to increase the level of "academic rigor" for all the newly approved courses. I am certain that as the other companies go through re-accreditation they too will have to deal with the increased requirements ACE is putting into place. Unfortunately, ACE doesn't have a rubric for us to follow, they allow each reviewer to make their own decisions and it's subjective. We are in the process of setting up our courses so that you need a final cumulative grade of 70% to pass the course rather than per quiz. We want our courses to reflect, as much as possible, the academic setting you experience at a college. You will still need to make a 50% on the final exam and an overall average of 70% to get your transfer credits.

[rowan555]

Hi Jennifer, Ava was correct in her answers about how our courses currently work. ACE is attempting to increase the level of "academic rigor" for all the newly approved courses. I am certain that as the other companies go through re-accreditation they too will have to deal with the increased requirements ACE is putting into place. Unfortunately, ACE doesn't have a rubric for us to follow, they allow each reviewer to make their own decisions and it's subjective. We are in the process of setting up our courses so that you need a final cumulative grade of 70% to pass the course rather than per quiz. We want our courses to reflect, as much as possible, the academic setting you experience at a college. You will still need to make a 50% on the final exam and an overall average of 70% to get your transfer credits.

I have never seen any course, at any college, in which you automatically failed if you scored under 70% on a single quiz. That just seems way over the top. There is no way I would risk spending the money for one of my kids to take a course which could be failed that easily.

[KayV]

Wow. I have no words, especially for courses that are so easy to find from other sources without such a huge risk of failure.

[jsd]

I agree that this is a weird system, but I'm kind of shocked that anyone thinks 70% is too rigorous or unreasonable.

[ndelco]

We are in the process of setting up our courses so that you need a final cumulative grade of 70% to pass the course rather than per quiz. We want our courses to reflect, as much as possible, the academic setting you experience at a college. You will still need to make a 50% on the final exam and an overall average of 70% to get your transfer credits.

I don't see the big deal. They said they are in the process of changing the grading system, so just wait to sign up if you want to take a course. I would say that they realize the system is not the best right now which is why they are making changes. Is it really that unreasonable for a new company to need to make some changes during their startup process? How many changes has Study.com recently made to make their product better? We should be happy that Ed4Credit is making these changes and coming here and communicating with us, not tearing them down even more on here.

[KayV]

Fair enough. I hope they are able to update their grading scheme soon and that they are able to develop upper level courses as well.

[davewill]

I agree that this is a weird system, but I'm kind of shocked that anyone thinks 70% is too rigorous or unreasonable.

70% is fine, but if you can't have even a little slip up without having to start all over, and losing your fee, it effectively puts the bar up pretty high. It would be OK, if there were more retries, even if you had to wait a while after the second.