Excelsior College says Bears' Guide is incorrect!
Mark Israel
of English (COTE) from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate
(in England). At a university in Mexico, the COTE would have counted as the
first semester's coursework toward a bachelor's degree. One US university
(Western Illinois University) awarded her 11 semester-hours of credit for it.
But Rosie has just gone through Excelsior College's Credit Review process (for
the Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts). Excelsior College's foreign
credential evaluator, Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc. (ECE), ruled that
her COTE was merely "vocational training", and awarded no credit at all for it.
So no credits for that appear in Excelsior's review.
Rosie e-mailed Excelsior: "I see that you have been known to make exceptions
to ECE's recommendations. (In _Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees
Nontraditionally_, 13th edition, Chapter 13, it says: 'When one of these
anomalies was pointed out to Regents, they agreed to accept the evaluation of
an agency other than the two on the list.') Could you please tell me how to
petition for such an exception to be made? Alternatively, I could submit my
COTE as part of a portfolio..."
Darlene Legault, Advising Assistant for Credit Review at Excelsior, replied:
"Unfortunately, the information that you quoted from the Bear's guide regarding
Excelsior College is incorrect. In the past, we did accept evaluations from
other agencies a number of years ago, but had problems with them and changed
our policy back to only accepting ECE and Josef Silney for Israeli evaluations.
Excelsior College does not evaluate portfolio's for credit, therefore, we
would not have any other student who was awarded credit for this."
Questioning that last statement, Rosie asked: "What about the portfolio
assessment options described at http://www.excelsior.edu/exams/xms_opts.htm ?"
Ms Legault replied: "As I stated, Excelsior College does not evaluate
portfolios. The link that you included outlined the following:
1. Excelsior College Flexible Assessment [...]
2. Empire State College Credit by Evaluation [...]
3. Ohio University Portfolio Assessment [...]
4. Charter Oak State College Portfolio Assessment [...]
As you can see, 2-4 are not offered through Excelsior College. The first
option is an exam that we did offer, but at this time, this process is being
revamped and not available to students."
Well, if it's not available, Excelsior's Web page should indicate that,
shouldn't it? OK, so no Option 1.
Exploring Option 2, we phoned Empire State College. Roz McClure of ESC
Assessment Services told me that, sometime in 2001, ESC stopped doing
portfolio assessments for other institutions; they now do them for ESC
matriculated students only. She was surprised when I pointed her to
Excelsior's Web page advertising this discontinued service.
So that's an update that needs to be made *both* to Excelsior's Web page and to
Bears' Guide!
(I tried to e-mail bears...@degreeinfo.com with these two corrections; but
the e-mail keeps bouncing, saying "The destination system is currently not
accepting any messages.")
Option 3 is not of much use, because it only allows one to challenge courses
offered by Ohio University.
Exploring Option 4, we phoned Charter Oak State College. The Charter Oak
Portfolio Advisor, Dr. Maryanne LeGrow, was very friendly and eager to help,
but says she has never supervised a portfolio in Teaching English as a Second
Language before. According to Charter Oak policy, we would have to identify a
set of equivalent (3-credit) courses at US universities, and submit one
portfolio per course, so this would be time-consuming and expensive.
(Dr LeGrow expressed surprise that Excelsior would neither except the 11
credits awarded for the COTE by Western Illinois University nor evaluate the
COTE themselves. Charter Oak seems like a friendlier place than Excelsior.
But there are other reasons for Rosie to get the degree from Excelsior: e.g.,
Charter Oak will apparently only award 12 credits for fluency in Spanish, as
opposed to Excelsior's 24.)
Can anyone suggest any alternative way of claiming these credits?
-- Mark Israel
Bakz
It appears that you are dealing with an evolving system, more so than an
erroneous Bear's Guide. Speaking solely for myself, I've jumped through
similar hoops.
ECE has a tough reputation. That is why so many schools choose them.
Personally, I would think a COTE similar to a TOEFL. But, just because ECE
downplays the cert, doesn't mean It can't be used in its context.
I would skip the 11 hours and look at some of the other cost effective yet
alternative methods for earning credit, such as CLEP / DANTES / GRE.
"Mark Israel" <MarkI...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:av93ce$4lk$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu...
Mark Israel
> It appears that you are dealing with an evolving system, more so
> than an erroneous Bear's Guide.
Quite so -- I'm sure the Bears' words were not misleading when they
wrote them. We still need to get the word out that the system has
evolved (devolved?).
I thought the subject line would get people's attention. Please
note the "says"; the word "incorrect" was used in the e-mail that
Excelsior sent to us.
> Personally, I would think a COTE similar to a TOEFL.
Not at all! Universities are quite right to award no credit for a
TOEFL, which merely tests that people can read and write English.
A COTE certifies that they can *teach* English, and would be
equivalent to courses like the following:
ENGL 4503 Introduction to TESL (3 credits)
ENGL 4513 Methods and Materials for TESL (3 credits)
ENGL 4532 Teaching Reading to ESL students (2 credits)
ENGL 4542 Teaching Writing to ESL students (2 credits)
Northwest College, Kirkland, WA
http://www.nwcollege.edu/catalog/programs/teslcert.html
18-LTCY-673 Phonetics for Teaching ESL (4 credits, dual level)
18-LTCY-674 Pedagogical analysis of English grammar for
ESL/EFL instruction. (4 graduate credits)
University of Cincinnati
http://www.education.uc.edu/programs/DivTeachEd/TESL/TESLGradProgram.htm
Engl 517. Second Language Acquisition (3 credits)
Engl 519. Second Language Assessment (3 credits)
Engl 525. Methods in Teaching Listening and Speaking Skills
to Nonnative Speakers of English (3 credits)
Iowa State University
http://www.engl.iastate.edu/courses/
CURR 813 Teaching English as a Second Language: Course Design 3
University of Nebraska Lincoln
http://tc.unl.edu/instrtech/academic/masters/masters.pdf
Rosie taught English as a Second Language for several years. It's
part of what she *knows*, and we should be able to document it.
Thank you for the response.
-- Mark Israel
Mark Israel
> look at some of the other cost effective yet alternative methods
> for earning credit, such as CLEP / DANTES / GRE.
Rosie took the GRE Subject Exam in Psychology in December. We'll
find out soon how well she did. Unfortunately, I haven't found any
CLEP or DANTES exam that she could take without learning the material
from scratch.
We expect Excelsior will give her 24 credits for fluency in Spanish.
Based on her knowledge of Spanish, she could pass an Italian or
Portuguese exam provided it were multiple-choice. I know the military
have such exams (the Defense Language Proficiency Test or DLPT),
but is there anything for civilians?
She has the ability to do simultaneous interpretation between English
and Spanish (i.e., she can translate the previous sentence while hearing
the current one). Do you know any way she could claim credit for that?
-- Mark Israel
dlkereluk
exceptions
> to ECE's recommendations. (In _Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees
Mark:
As Bakz correctly stated, these things are part of a "rapidly evolving
system." You mentioned that you used the 13th edition of Bears' Guide. Well,
there has been another edition published since then, with a new one (15th
edition) more or less on the way to bookstores as we speak.
The email address that you attempted to use to contact the Bears is out of
date. If you had the 14th edition (or access to it at your local library) or
visited http://www.degree.net, you would have found a current email address
for informing the Bears or their publishers about errors or omissions in
their book.
While books are a good starting point for learning a bit more about
obtaining credit either traditionally, or non traditionally, students (and
potential) should always make sure that the information that they have is
current by contacting educational institutions that they are interested in,
and by doing research on the Internet. It's really important for people to
do this before they undertake any actions toward getting admitted to a
college or having the credits from their previous academic work evaluated to
avoid an unnecessary or wasteful outlay of money.
Darren.
DK
for Israel) they might give you credit even if ECE doesn't.
MarkI...@aol.com (Mark Israel) wrote in message news:<av93ce$4lk$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>...
Mark Israel
> ECE has a tough reputation. That is why so many schools choose them.
How do we know there's any judgement behind the toughness?
How do we know that some clerk at ECE didn't just say to herself,
"I'm not familiar with this credential. It's too much trouble to
figure out what the credential really means, so I can process more
credentials per hour (thus leaving me more time to surf the Web for
fun) if I simply dismiss this as 'vocational training'"?
When Rosie first applied to Western Illinois University, she had UCSD
send WIU a transcript showing one course. WIU rejected this course
as "vocational training". Later, Rosie took 2 more courses at UCSD,
so she had UCSD send WIU another transcript. This time round, WIU
accepted all 3 courses, including the one they had originally
rejected!
Credit awards are a game of darts. The problem with Excelsior and
ECE is that there is now absolutely no appeal against unlucky dart
throws. And Bears' Guide readers need to be warned about this.
-- Mark Israel
Mark Israel
> You mentioned that you used the 13th edition of Bears' Guide. Well,
> there has been another edition published since then
I did, in fact, check the 14th edition at a bookshop. The sentence
quoted was retained verbatim, except that "Regents" was changed to
"Excelsior".
> with a new one (15th edition) more or less on the way to
> bookstores as we speak.
Does this mean it's too late to correct any misleading statements
that I find?
> The email address that you attempted to use to contact the Bears
> is out of date. If you had [...] visited http://www.degree.net,
> you would have found a current email address [...]
I did visit http://www.degree.net! http://www.degree.net/contact.htm
is where I got the e-mail address bears...@degree.net (from which
e-mail has been bouncing). I did not get the e-mail address from a
book.
-- Mark Israel
Bakz
They offer courses aimed at completion of the DANTES and CLEP exams. They
aren't free. However, the people I know who have used them, have had
excellent results, always in the top 5 percentile. You may be able to check
them out at a library. Also, the REA guides (which are about worthless as
guides go) do have excellent example test questions. I always use them to
prepare.
The College Board also offers a list of study references. These, you can
almost assuredly check out of a library. The REA's and most books are also
available on Amazon.
Sorry about the issues. Good luck.
"Mark Israel" <MarkI...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:avabsr$c5i$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu...
Mark Israel
> Try having it evaluated by Silny (or do they only accept their eval
> for Israel) [...]
>
>> Darlene Legault, Advising Assistant for Credit Review at
>> Excelsior, replied: "Unfortunately, the information that you
>> quoted from the Bear's guide regarding Excelsior College is
>> incorrect. In the past, we did accept evaluations from other
>> agencies a number of years ago, but had problems with them and
>> changed our policy back to only accepting ECE and Josef Silney
>> for Israeli evaluations.
Well, I can't think why else she would have written those last
three words. Thanks for trying to help, though.
-- Mark Israel
dlkereluk
> In article <v1hfcih...@corp.supernews.com>, dlkereluk
<dlkere...@saskNOTtel.neto> writes:
>
> > You mentioned that you used the 13th edition of Bears' Guide. Well,
> > there has been another edition published since then
>
> I did, in fact, check the 14th edition at a bookshop. The sentence
> quoted was retained verbatim, except that "Regents" was changed to
> "Excelsior".
I'll take your word for it, since I can't seem to find the sentence in
question ('When one of these
anomalies was pointed out to Regents, they agreed to accept the evaluation
of
an agency other than the two on the list.') Chapter 13 in the 14th edition
refers to "Correspondence Courses." I tried to find the sentence that you
referred to in Chapter 14 (Credit for Life-Experience Learning) and Chapter
16 (Credential and Transcript Evaulation Services), but to no avail. Keep in
mind that "It will do no good to pound on a table and say, 'What do you mean
I can't do this? John Bear says that rules don't mean anything, anyway.' "
(Bears' Guide, 14th edition, pg. 309)
> > with a new one (15th edition) more or less on the way to
> > bookstores as we speak.
>
> Does this mean it's too late to correct any misleading statements
> that I find?
I'm sure that you are aware that at the publisher's website that there is an
area that lists updates to the "current" version of Bears' Guide. I'm quite
sure that once you have the correct email address for the Bears that they
would be happy to hear from you.
> > The email address that you attempted to use to contact the Bears
> > is out of date. If you had [...] visited http://www.degree.net,
> > you would have found a current email address [...]
>
> I did visit http://www.degree.net! http://www.degree.net/contact.htm
> is where I got the e-mail address bears...@degree.net (from which
> e-mail has been bouncing). I did not get the e-mail address from a
> book.
In your original post, you stated that you emailed them at
bears...@degreeinfo.com. The email address that the Bears use for comments
is johnan...@degree.net.
Darren.
Mark Israel
> I'll take your word for it, since I can't seem to find the sentence in
> question ('When one of these anomalies was pointed out to Regents, they
> agreed to accept the evaluation of an agency other than the two on the list.')
You've turned up a couple of slips in my original post, for which
I do apologize. That sentence is in fact in Chapter 17, titled "The
Credit Bank Service" (which also, at least in my 13th Edition,
doesn't mention that Charter Oak has a similar "Credit Registry").
> you stated that you emailed them at bears...@degreeinfo.com
I did state that, but my outgoing mail says that I actually sent
the messages to bears...@degree.net (and they did bounce). Thank
you! I appreciate your spotting these mistakes.
> Keep in mind that "It will do no good to pound on a table and say,
> 'What do you mean I can't do this? John Bear says that rules don't
> mean anything, anyway.' "
Good quote, but the Excelsior claim is not in the "Bending the Rules"
section.
I do think he should moderate some of his inspirational anecdotes --
like the one in Chapter 12: "Equivalency Examinations" about the
National Guard Sergeant, who got 90 credits for 3 GRE exams. He
mentions Excelsior's change to a sliding scale in 1997, but doesn't
mention that before that, "satisfactory performance" was a mere
35th-percentile score, which now gets only 3 credits. (See
http://pages.prodigy.com/TXKV53A/reggre.html .) That National
Guard Sergeant might have got only 9 credits from Excelsior today!
And what about that famous brainstorming list in Chapter 14: "Credit
for Life-Experience Learning", which includes "buying Persian rugs"
(with the disclaimer, of course)? It's a far cry from Bakz's
advice (which seems to boil down to "If there isn't a CLEP, DANTES,
or GRE exam for it, then forget about it"), isn't it?
But I shouldn't be so down on Dr Bear. I see from the archives that
he's suffered plenty of completely unjust harassment here.
-- Mark Israel
DreamCast Help !
education system as they cliams to be...
most of the time, they evaluated based on titles of the subject rather than
content...
"Mark Israel" <MarkI...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:avajq2$5kd$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu...
John Bear
ECE, annoyingly, does differ significantly from many of the other comparable
agencies, but clearly they have the "in" at Excelsior. The VP at Excelsior who
listened to reason, Dr. Paula Peinovich, has moved on to Walden.
Is it also the case that Excelsior will not accept those 11 units from Western
Illinois? Or has your wife tried? And since Western Illinois has already accepted
it, and since they have a well-regarded 100% distance learning degree program,
why not there?
It would be wonderful if books were self-correcting, but they do grow obsolete as
they sit on the shelf. You refer to my 13th edition. The 14th edition, which came
out 24 months ago, does not refer to this situation (at least I don't quickly find
it), nor does the 15th edition, which will be the publisher's warehouse in 4 days.
You say you "tried to e-mail bears...@degreeinfo.com with these two corrections;
but the e-mail keeps bouncing, saying "The destination system is currently not
accepting any messages.'" I'm afraid I don't recognize that Email address. I
believe the publisher's site is bears...@degree.net.
Sincerely, John Bear
Mark Israel
> You refer to my 13th edition. The 14th edition, which came
> out 24 months ago, does not refer to this situation (at least
> I don't quickly find it),
Dr Bear, thank you for responding.
It does -- in the chapter titled "The Credit Bank Service".
More detail in my personal e-mail to you.
The other out-of-date fact that I mentioned (portfolios through
Empire State) is in your alphabetical entry for "Excelsior".
(And Excelsior STILL hasn't updated its Web page
http://www.excelsior.edu/exams/xms_opts.htm , where
the first two options mentioned aren't available. GRRR!)
So that's 2 updates for your Web page
http://www.degree.net/updates/bearsguide14/index.html ,
plus the other concerns that I mentioned later in the thread (and
will append to my personal e-mail).
> Is it also the case that Excelsior will not accept those
> 11 units from Western Illinois?
Yes, they will not.
> And since Western Illinois has already accepted it, and
> since they have a well-regarded 100% distance learning
> degree program, why not there?
The programs at Illinois universities used to be quite lax, but they
were all toughened (I presume because of new state regulations)
shortly before Rosie applied in 1999. Rosie has taken only 3
courses from WIU; she would have to take 7 more (including specific
courses only offered in certain semesters, like Eng. 280 and Comm.
241 -- see http://www.wiu.edu/users/mibogd/ ) and meet several other
requirements. And another rule (
http://www.wiu.edu/users/miisp/courses/content.html , under "How to
Enroll") says one can only take 2 independent study courses per
semester! I don't think she could graduate from there any time
soon.
-- Mark Israel
Mark Israel
> I'm sure that you are aware that at the publisher's website that
> there is an area that lists updates to the "current" version of
> Bears' Guide. I'm quite sure that once you have the correct email
> address for the Bears that they would be happy to hear from you.
Dr Bear has indeed been very gracious in the e-mail that we
have now exchanged.
Unfortunately, that update area (
http://www.degree.net/updates/bearsguide14/index.html ) is not
something we can rely on. Dr Bear has told me that he is
disappointed that his publisher, Ten Speed, is not keeping the
Degree.net site up to date. We may have to resort to posting
online updates to Bears' Guide somewhere else.
You have a much better chance of reaching Dr Bear at the address
he uses on Usenet than at the address given at the Website.
-- Mark Israel