About Us
Technical Careers Ambassador Network (TCAN)
A college degree can transform a student’s life. When students earn a degree or professional certification, it not only changes their circumstances for the better, but has positive effects through the lives of students’ family members, friends, and colleagues, too. Regrettably, the path to a college degree or professional certification isn’t always a clear path or easy for students and their families to follow.
Fortunately, Technical Career Ambassador Network is here to assist students with
alternative credit pathways and offer a clear and affordable solution. Our programs are designed to support enrollment and retention at partner institutions, increases the chances for students to return to their institution and persist till graduation. By partnering with us students discover that a college degree or professional certification is within each.
“I am so convinced in this process I decided to start the Technical Career Ambassador Network to assist students in their journey.”
G. Gervais - Founder
Student Support and Success
Though TCAN providers courses are self-paced and allow students flexibility in their approach to the material, not all students will enter the course with the same level of preparation, nor will they necessarily have the same academic or affective needs as they progress through a course. To provide students with a wide variety of support options throughout their course, TCAN offers robust resource kit. Students can rely on a suite of self-serve tools, along with tutors, faculty, and dedicated support staff to help them.
The National Center for Academic Transformation strongly recommends that students enrolled in online courses have access to advisors dedicated to providing support for nonacademic concerns, such as account information, course navigation, and transcript requests. In accordance with this recommendation Technical Career Ambassador Network in conjunction with our educational providers offers students the ability to contact non-academic advisors seven days a week by email, chat, or telephone, or zoom conference. Though students in self-paced courses may not be led through the material by a professor following a rigid timeline, students are always able to receive faculty guidance and feedback regarding any questions or concerns they might have about course materials.
As noted previously, students enter courses with vastly different skills and educational experiences, so many students desire additional help understanding a concept or practicing a skill. Tutors, integral to the scaffolding process (Sutton, 1998; Dvorak 2001), are available at no additional cost to students enrolled in any StraighterLine course. Tutoring is offered by reputable providers, including Smarthinking and Net Tutor, and tutors are trained in offering personalized, non-directive tutoring both synchronously and asynchronously.
In addition to offering support through advisors, faculty, and tutors, TCAN maintains an innovative nurturing program that communicates relevant information to students based on their progress through milestones in the course, including their login activity and time-on-task, and recommends relevant content for students based on their unique profiles. For example, students who have not logged into a course for a few days may be invited to return to their studies, and students who receive a failing grade on their first assignment are offered study tips and the opportunity to retake the assignment. A weekly progress report and live check in may be included in the plan.
Blueprint to Success
In a climate where financial burden, program flexibility, and academic preparation are key concerns for prospective students, enrolling and retaining learners can be an institutional challenge. Fortunately, Technicial Career Ambassador Network by way of our partnerships provide solution by offering affordable, flexible, fully online courses that are recommended for college credit by the American Council on Education (ACE) and transfer seamlessly to more than 1,500 partnering institutions.
Technical Career Ambassador Networks partnership with subscription mode-based platforms is ideal for students who could benefit from the opportunity to learn at their own pace. TCAN students pay a low subscription fee and may choose. from a comprehensive catalog of more than sixty general education courses, 800 electives from a multitude of platforms most of which are priced a fraction of what is offered to the general public (including the accompanying e-textbook at no additional cost). Students can complete their courses on a timeline that is convenient for them and can even pause their experience if they need to take a break for a while and pick up where they left off later with no penalty.
TCAN expertise on multi educator platforms provide the students with the expertise to find a clear affordable user path cutting through the bureaucratic red tape and providing the student with a go to option for immediate resolution to career ,educational roadblocks. We at TCAN realize that one size education does not fit all.
Our program is designed to help pre-college, at-risk and stopped-out students meet admissions requirements and persist to graduation. We are also here to help students complete their journey to credentials they need in the workforce.
Our Philosophy
At Technicial Career Ambassador Network and our content providers are committed to promoting academic integrity and helping students understand how to participate ethically within an academic community. Our philosophy of academic integrity is aligned to the six fundamentals of academic integrity outlined by the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI): honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage (“The Fundamental Values”, 2013).
In the spirit of those values, StraighterLine believes that most students genuinely want—and most will try—to succeed on their own; however, students may be more likely to turn to unethical means of assistance if they believe they cannot demonstrate mastery of course material themselves.
Thus, courses have been designed to help students develop confidence and feel that the course material is within their grasp: students can take as much time as they feel they need to engage with material, they can practice difficult concepts during low-stakes formative assessments, and, through clearly communicated course and lesson objectives, they know what to expect from their assessments.