This is so they can ride out the end while the degrees mean something. I live in WI and am familiar with what's going on here with the higher-ed budget.
If you give people a test they can take online, how long do you think it will be before the answers get out there and people are just easily getting degrees? The degrees will mean less than they do now.
I can tell you from both the student side and the teacher side that students who cannot perform the tasks required in their field can still pass tests. The "fizz-buzz" failers, for example.
I will be 100% okay with this approach, however, if they are performance-based assessments. The college I teach at is moving in that direction - students must practice for and demonstrate the abilities for the competencies.
I've never been a believer in tests, so I like performance based learning, especially for programming.
>If you give people a test they can take online, how long do you think it will be before the answers get out there and people are just easily getting degrees?
The tests are very unlikely to be online. The most probable scenario is that they are proctored at local professional test centers just like nearly every other distance education program.
You think so? If students can never show up to a classroom, why would they show up for a test? I've taken DE courses from a few different places - all of them used the LMS for the final. No proctor needed.
Protoring costs money. The idea here is to charge for degrees while keeping resources the same, or reducing them. I can give you a few online tests, charge you $12,000 for an accredited degree, and we both win. You get a degree without having to show up, and nobody has to extend resources other than a little bit of time to grade your stuff.
If you give people a test they can take online, how long do you think it will be before the answers get out there and people are just easily getting degrees? The degrees will mean less than they do now.
I can tell you from both the student side and the teacher side that students who cannot perform the tasks required in their field can still pass tests. The "fizz-buzz" failers, for example.
I will be 100% okay with this approach, however, if they are performance-based assessments. The college I teach at is moving in that direction - students must practice for and demonstrate the abilities for the competencies.
I've never been a believer in tests, so I like performance based learning, especially for programming.