For many colleges, it isn’t easy to figure out how—or whether—to award academic credit for learning that occurs outside the classroom. But as institutions look to raise completion rates, be more responsive to the needs of adult learners, and deal with pressing questions about competencies and cost, solving the prior-learning puzzle has taken on new urgency.
With that challenge in mind, the University of Akron next month will roll out a new tutorial-based program aimed at helping more students earn credit for course material they’ve already mastered. “Save money and graduate early,” promises the Web site for Express to Success, as Akron’s new program is called.
The university has long offered students the option to request for-credit examinations in subjects they’ve studied elsewhere, but the tests weren’t always available and many students weren’t aware of the policy. The new tutorials are designed to give students a chance to refresh their knowledge in certain areas before deciding whether to take the tests.
“Test-prep tutorials” will be offered this summer in mathematics, statistics, sociology, psychology, and communications. They will include 10 hours of instruction, cost $100 each, and be taught by graduate assistants. The university at first will offer the tutorials in nine courses—including introductory sociology and psychology—and may expand the offerings if they’re successful.
The first tutorials, in “College Algebra,” “Statistics for Everyday Life,” and “Introduction to Public Speaking,” are scheduled to begin on May 20; the corresponding exams are in late May and early June.
William M. Sherman, Akron’s senior vice president, provost, and chief operating officer, says Express to Success is a “small first step” that enables the university to offer “credentialing” for learning regardless of where it happens.
“In this day and age, learning happens anytime, anywhere, potentially all the time through any one of a number of methods—experiencing a museum, what you pick up and read or listen to in a library, what you learn on the Web, what you might learn in a massive open online course,” Mr. Sherman says. The hope, he says, is that the tutorials will make the university’s credit-by-exam options more appealing to more students.
University officials stress that students may pursue one of three paths after completing a tutorial. If students are confident in their mastery of the subject matter, they may take the exam for credit. If they have doubts, they may enroll in the affiliated course the next time it’s offered at the university, and apply the $100 tutorial fee toward that course’s tuition. Or, students may walk away and take neither the course nor the exam. The test itself, which costs $30 per credit hour, carries a risk: The grade earned on the exam is the grade that will appear on a student’s transcript.
William T. Lyons, the university’s acting assistant dean, is overseeing the project. He says many students feel that they’ve already learned the subject matter that would be taught in a university class but that their grasp of it is rusty. “They really need a refresher,” says Mr. Lyons, who is also a professor of political science at Akron. The point of the tutorials, he says, is: “Do I want to try credit-by-exam or not?”
A Blended Approach
Akron’s approach appears to be unusual. Like bridge programs, challenge exams, and the College Level Examination Program, known as CLEP, Express to Success aims to address the gray area where prior learning and academic credit meet. And it comes at a time of turbulent debate over higher education’s pricing structures and its attitudes toward learning outside the classroom.
Chari A. Leader Kelley, of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, says Akron’s efforts strike her as “student-centric” and “affordable.” The program’s attempts to make more students aware of the university’s existing for-credit exam options, she adds, reflect a growing interest among some colleges to find ways for students to leverage their prior knowledge in certain areas. That enthusiasm is particularly prevalent, she says, among colleges looking to improve their completion rates, or those with large adult-learner populations—or both.
What appears to set the Akron program apart, says Ms. Leader Kelley, who is the council’s vice president for LearningCounts.org, an online prior-learning-assessment service, is its blend of tactics. It uses exams that are unique to the University of Akron—all but one of the nine for-credit exams are identical to the final comprehensive exams offered in the affiliated university courses—along with a preparatory approach typically associated with national for-credit exams like CLEP. (But in Akron’s case, she points out, the prep work has a bonus: face time with teachers.)
That institutional stamp, though, could be a limitation for some students who need to transfer the credits to another college. So says Burck Smith, the chief executive and founder of StraighterLine, a company that offers online introductory college courses at low prices. (The University of Akron was a partner with StraighterLine until 2011, when university officials said they would instead pursue an internal strategy for online learning.)
Mr. Smith says Akron’s approach strikes him as “a great program.” But he cautions that as institutions try to get creative and come up with their own distinct ways of handling prior learning, the result isn’t always beneficial to students.
“They’re deliberately reinventing the wheel to create a business model,” he says. “It’s a good business model for the students who come there. But it may not have applicability beyond Akron.”
Akron officials, meanwhile, say they’re just trying to help students currently enrolled at the university—those who are most likely, as college graduates, to invigorate Northeast Ohio’s economy.
“We, like every university, were struggling to try to meet our students where they are,” says Mr. Lyons, the assistant dean. “We want to help them graduate as quickly as possible.”
