MOOC for Freshman Year Credit via ASU

[Leherself]

I've got a thread going on this over on my FB page- it's pretty much freaking out the "higher ed community" but I like what it represents. The difference, I think, between an option like this and an option like SL is that these are RA credits- currently SL, ALEKS, Sophia, TEEX, etc. are only ACE credits, which are limiting in their utility. I think one of the aspects that is appealing, is that you don't pay until after you pass (besides the $45 registration) so if you decide not to finish, you're only out $45.

One of the big criticisms is HOW this gets RA without being evaluated, and I have no thoughts on that complex issue, but it will be interesting to see if this model sparks other schools to follow in line or if this fizzles out.

And according to the article, there's not going to be any way to tell on the transcript that these courses were delivered by MOOC. So that implies that these will be graded credits also. So grades for classes that you only submit if you know you've passed?

Sure, you could take classes from a community college for less money. You could do CLEP/Straighterline/etc. for less money. But being able to get RA credit from a full-on university, without any risk of wrecking your GPA, and only paying if you passed? That's a completely unique offering in the land of higher ed as far as I know.

One crowd that I could really see taking advantage of it is highschool kids - especially the homeschooling crowd. They can try college level work, and get credit if they do well... but with no negative consequences if they don't do well. For parents & kids that are worried about competitive admissions and GPAs, that might be a more attractive prospect than dual enrollment at a local school.

Not as interesting for a lot of people here, though. For one, these are full courses - likely with a comparable workload to ASU online's traditional online classes. I know that for me, part of the appeal of testing out is *not* having to do all that work! Lol. Not to mention that almost all the classes they're going to offer would duplicate classes already available by CBE - though not all. Their 200-level "Human Origins" anthropology class looks interesting.

Ultimately I think these are more for the larger crowd that takes advantage of things like testing - the people who use a few tests to get ahead, or save a little bit of money, but are for the most part looking for a conventional college experience - not the people who are trying to test out of everything (we're a pretty fringe minority ). The same students who are using AP tests will probably also be interested in this. Interestingly, ASU also accepts up to 60 credits of CBE. So between the freshman course offerings, and CBE, you could probably finish almost everything but your actual major requirements before you ever took a traditional ASU class.