Questions About TESC course PLZ HELP!!!!

[Doctor H]

Hello Wonderful People,



I'd like to know how does an online course at TESC work?

Is it largely based on written assignments?

Are the textbooks necessary? What kind(company) textbooks do they use?

Are courses graded solely on projects or is there a test?

Are the tests proctored?

Are the courses a set paced schedule or can I finish the course quickly?



Sorry for all the questions. I just wanted answers from students and not a sales pitch from admissions. Thank you all, you have been very helpful on my quest to achieve my degree.


Thank you in advance,


Doctor H

[jam123]

I am taking 4 courses right now. COS-241, COS-330, COS-352 and MAT-271

The textbook is required. You cannot pass without it. They use various publishers (mine are Jones & Bartlett, Cengage, and McGraw Hill)

The courses are paced over the 12 weeks. You can do written assignments and discussion posts ahead of time, but everything else (midterms, finals and responding to fellow classmates) are paced.

Grade for my classes are usually 20-30% midterm, 20-30% final and 30-40% written assignments and 10-20% discussion forums


I have 1-2 online discussion posts due every 2 weeks per class
I have to post comments to two fellow classmates' posts every 2 weeks per class
I have 1 written assignment due every 2 weeks per class (usually exercises from the textbook)
One class (COS-241) has a final project.
The only exams are a midterm and final per class

All four of my midterms are proctored (3 using local proctors and 1 using ProctorU).
One midterm is open book (COS-352), one is open book/notes (COS-241) and the other two are closed book.
Only two of the finals are proctored (via ProctorU) and one is open book (COS-352) and one is closed book (COS-330).
The other two finals are unproctored.


If you do a Google search for the course number you can easily find the syllabus for the course. It will have everything you are asking about. It may not be 100% accurate but it should be close.

Example of Google search
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe...8j3j1l26l0.

[dcan]

Neither of my classes (Composition II and Biz Law) had a final test. Both were guided study. Composition was 100% papers, Biz Law had a midterm and final paper. Some classes have midterms and finals, some midterms and no finals, some no tests at all. Scoring varies depending on if tests are used or not. But in all cases it seems heavily weighted towards "if you can write a decent paper you can pass."

Here's the relevant bit from my Biz Law syllabus:

Written Assignments 1–10 50 percent (that's 5% per assignment)
Midterm Examination 30 percent
Final Paper 20 percent

So written assignments count for 70% of the grade. The online variants are a bit different because online discussion participation counts towards your grade. For example, here's the Biz Law syllabus for online.

Also, neither of my classes had assignments in the texts -- all assignments were in the PDF syllabus provided through Blackboard. My probable next class (managerial accounting) I believe has chapter assignments. Either way you definitely need the textbooks. Good news on the textbooks though, you can buy them from Amazon then sell them back for a good % of what you paid. At that I have no problem buying new (or "like new") as long as my loss isn't too great. Just don't write in them if you want to sell them back. Or alternately you can sell them directly on Amazon when you are done with them.

BTW you can view the simplified syllabus for any class (no assignments, but basically everything else) from the course's description page at TESC. i.e. here's the LAW-201 course page with syllabus link.