The School of Distance Education (SDE) opened the Academic Credit Bank System (ACBS) starting this semester.ACBS is an educational system that officially acknowledges diverse forms of learning experiences and certificates acquired inside and outside of school as academic credits, aimed to establish an open and lifelong learning society. Through the system, students who satisfy certain standards by accumulating credits can receive a Bachelor’s degree.People of all ages with a high school diploma or equivalent are eligible for ACBS. The SDE, founded in May 2011 with an aim to provide quality education to adult learners, newly developed ACBS with professors at Ewha.“Ewha has been already operating ACBS offline since 1999,” said Yoon Seong-hye, a researcher at the SDE. “However, many educational institutions providing online-based ACBS have emerged since then, and have appealed to many learners who wished to study and work simultaneously. Consequently, we could not fully satisfy the learners’ needs with only the offline ACBS anymore.”The SDE offers three main subjects: Bachelor of Business Administration Program, Certificate Program for Lifelong Educator, and Liberal Arts Course.A total of 15 classes are open after obtaining an official authorization from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. All classes are taught by full-time professors in the fields such as business administration and education.Students who are high school graduates are required to acquire more than 140 credits to earn a Bachelor’s degree.The SDE students will receive a Bachelor’s degree in the name of the Minister of Education, Science and Technology, not from Ewha president Kim Sun-uk.For the first start of the spring semester, approximately 200 students have enrolled, and the application period for the second start will be until April 9. “ACBS has been largely criticized for its educational quality since the number of institutions opening ACBS online classes increased at a fast pace,” Yoon said. “Thus, Ewha SDE will strive to contribute to enhancing the quality of ACBS by utilizing excellent resources Ewha has. Also, we plan to open up more subjects and classes to provide learners with a wider variety of choices.”
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