THE CHALLENGE - Breaking down the wall of secrecy
There was a big problem in community colleges. While anywhere from 20%-50% of students take courses at multiple colleges, there was very little public information regarding what these courses transferred as. The information existed, it was just not easily available. It was treated like a state secret at many institutions. CourseHelper understands that we live in a world that provides unprecedented access to information. From health information to news, information is instantaneously available for everything. Everything EXCEPT college courses.
As community college faculty, we are aware of the difficulty in finding accurate course information. This problem is especially acute when students take courses in one state and hope to apply them to another state. Both students and counselors spend untold hours trying to determine course equivalents between colleges and universities. Because the number of available counseling hours is limited, each hour spent determining these course equivalencies is one less hour we can spend with other students needing assistance planning their future.
CourseHelper Solution - Speed/ Accuracy/ Access
This was the genesis of CourseHelper. If students could look-up their own course comparisons, that would free up time for counselors to spend on other academic issues. Students would also get more timely information, because they would not need to speak directly with a counselor to get the information they needed. The system also simplifies the transcript evaluation process.
This is a huge improvement. Currently at many institutions, students wait weeks both to speak with a counselor and learn what courses the get credit for when they have their transcripts evaluated. This system can provide much of that information in seconds.
CourseHelper, however, does not replace the need for a counselor. Counselors provide invaluable advice regarding course selection, sequencing, and prerequisites. Counselors also provide information related to major choice, personal discussion making and integrating course selection with life stressors and responsibilities.
We hope you will use CourseHelper to assist you in gathering information quickly. Similar to voting in Chicago, however, we hope that you will go to your counselor early and often in your college career.
Leave a Legacy - Become a solution for future generations of students
We are basically two guys who identified a problem and worked to create a solution. By creating this system with with ease of use extremely low costs for institutions, CourseHelper will become a standard in education. It will save institutions many millions of dollars that they would otherwise spend on expensive course evaluation systems. For students, CourseHelper will provide a simple user interface that easily provides information and has checks in place to ensure a high level of accuracy. Because of these factors, many future generations of students will benefit from CourseHelper.
