TESU Still Not Accepting Shmoop/FEMA

[nosey561]

Was it a day or was it a month? Check your sources.

My recollection was a matter of days, but if you know something I don't then I don't mind being corrected. It doesn't change anything about my point.

Here is a copy of the quote from Shmoop from the original thread on what triggered the ban...

"Thanks for reaching out! We're working with Thomas Edison State University and the team at ACE to get this resolved as quickly as possible.

To give you a quick background on the issue: TESU identified a student who transferred an unusually high number of credits from Shmoop in a short amount of time, and they made the decision to pause their acceptance of Shmoop coursework while they look into the situation further. Please note that this temporary pause in accepting our courses only applies to TESU; no other institutions should be affected by this."

The implication is that someone was caught cheating and TESU instituted the ban because they no longer trusted in Shmoop's approach to academic integrity. At the time Shmoop thought the ban was temporary, but obviously, it has become permanent.

BTW there are plenty of posts regarding finishing a ton of courses in 1 month from Straighterline,study.com,etc,so why the focus on Shmoop?

Considering there are students who submit transcripts showing that they are able to complete 20+ credits during a month, the student that TESU flagged in their review had to have been doing something crazy! My guess is that they must have done something like completing a dozen courses in a week (or less) or completed a ton of courses in a single day. To be flagged they had to have done something statistically outside the realm of what other accelerators are listing on their transcripts.

The Shmoop debacle is also why I tend to discourage people when they suggest that students should just look up their answers or only focus on the quizzes and fail the final exam at Straighterline, even though it is allowed. If TESU got the impression that is what everyone is doing, they could sanction Straighterline as well, and we'd hate to see TESU decide to ban them too.

Either way, every person who is discovered to have earned credits without actually learning the material diminishes the value of the degrees for everyone else. It could also create the impression that TESU is a diploma mill if they allow it. I can't blame TESU for wanting to ban a provider that makes them look bad. I know this kind of thing also happens in traditional colleges, but online and nontraditional learning is under much more scrutiny... especially for those of us who use their life experience to accelerate degree completion.

Thanks Merlin for your excellent points.We are lucky to have your perspective on this forum.

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Was it a day or was it a month? Check your sources. 

Hey, slow your roll there nosey561!  jsd is a fantastic contributor to this forum and has helped a lot of people here.  There is no need to be rude to him.  Especially when he's right.

Thank you dfrecore and jsd. Just a disagreement- not being rude at all.