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Monday, March 30, 2015

New Site Offers Affordable Path to a Degree

Education-Portal.com started as a way for students to find inexpensive study resources for exams. The start-up then began creating online courses to help students pass College-Level Examination Program exams, which provided college credits for about $80 per course.

The firm recently relaunched as Study.com, offering 19 courses accepted for credit by the American Council on Education and another 30 under review. Upon completion of the course and passing proctored exams, students can submit their scores to more than 2,900 accredited colleges for transfer credit and could conceivably earn enough credit to test out of their first two years of college.

The old website had more than 10 million visitors each month. The new Study.com site requires a $50 monthly fee, but that provides access to the site’s full library of more than 1,000 courses and 10,000 individual lessons.

“This system is designed to be extremely accessible and can really help students to afford college in a highly efficient way,” Jessica Bayliss, director of education for the company, told eCampus News.

The classes consist of a series of video lessons that generally last five to 10 minutes. Students then take the multiple-choice quiz for immediate feedback. There is also an “Ask The Instructor” link to each course that allows students to submit questions to an instructor, who will reply to within a day or two.

“We want to become the ultimate study resource,” Bayliss said. “That means providing lessons to teach students everything they would want to learn. So, more specialized courses will be developed. And we want to expand the age range of students we serve.”