Arizona State University (ASU) and edX recently announced a joint project to offer an online freshman year with full official credit from ASU - The Global Freshman Academy:
“We’re going to have 12 new courses, of which students will take eight,” Mr. Crow (President of ASU) said. “They have to be constructed at a fantastic level of digital immersion, not just talking heads. This is a general education freshman year, not a series of disconnected courses, so they have to be thought through together.”
All courses will be designed and taught by leading faculty at ASU. Whether the Department of Education bugaboo of competency based testing will be used is not clear from information I have seen.
This is truly an "open admissions" program, with no entrance requirements. Students pay nothing to take the courses, only paying after successful course completion if they desire to get ASU credit. Projected cost for the credit will be no more than $200 per credit hour. The combination of relatively low cost, online accessibility and convenience, and college credit from a major institution certainly make this a great experiment, and may well make this a very successful program.
