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June 17, 2008, 03:05 PM ET
Who Needs a Professor When There's a Tutor Available?
An unusual new commercial service offers low-cost online courses and connects students to accredited colleges who will accept the courses for credit. The only thing missing: professors.
The service, called StraighterLine, is run by SmartThinking, a company that operates an online tutoring service used by about 300 colleges and universities. The online courses offered by StraighterLine are self-guided, and if students run into trouble they can summon a tutor from SmartThiking and talk with them via instant messaging. Students turn in their assignments or papers to tutors for grading as well.
“We’re using our tutoring service as the instructional component,” says Burck Smith, CEO of SmartThinking. “Students move through the course, and when they have a problem they click a button and they’re talking with a tutor.”
The courses cost $399 each, which includes 10 hours of time with a tutor. If students need more one-on-one help, they can pay extra for more tutoring.
The courses themselves were developed by McGraw-Hill, and StraighterLine uses Blackboard’s course-management service. So this virtual college is essentially cobbled together from various off-the-shelf learning services.
So far three colleges have agreed to grant credit for the StraighterLine courses — Fort Hays State University, Jones International University, and Potomac College.
The colleges see the partnership as a way to attract new students. “One of the things we hope to do is convert those students to Jones students,” says D. Terry Rawls, a vice chancellor at Jones International. “My expectation is that in reality students will take one maybe two courses with StraighterLine and then the students will take the rest of their courses with us.”
Richard Garrett, a senior analyst for Eduventures, sees the service as part of a broader trend of colleges granting credit for unconventional college experience, provided that the students can pass a test or otherwise demonstrate competency. And that raises the question, he says, “what is the core business of the academy versus what can be outsourced?”—Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Teaching
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