8/6 Only: Straighterline free semester

[Kelly4altcreds]

Straighterline is launching a "Finish Your Degree" promo tomorrow (Weds. Aug 6).
New students to Straighterline can enroll in any of their top gen ed courses (I listed them below) for free and have until Dec. 6, 2025 to complete the courses.  No course cost or monthly fee.  Totally free.  

My niece plans to knock out 6 courses by 12/6, but I'm sure a lot of you move faster with self-paced courses.  She's new to this whole thing.

Here's the URL:  https://www.straighterline.com/finish-your-degree/

She clicked on "Claim Your Free Semester" and got an email that said she'll get login details for her account tomorrow.  No credit card needed.  Tomorrow she'll grab the gen eds she needs, but she won't start until after Labor Day, so the extra time is nice.

Here are the courses that are in the promo - most or all, no longer have proctoring.  Looks like they're removing proctoring altogether.  Just check syllabi to make sure.

Anatomy & Physiology I, Anatomy & Physiology II, Business Communication, Eng Comp I, Eng Comp II, General Chemistry I, Intro to Biology, Intro to Communication, Intro to Nutrition, Intro to Psychology, Intro to Sociology, Intro to Statistics, Life-Span Development, Medical Terminology, Microbiology, and Student Success.  

I left out the courses with labs because that's extra money, but they're in the promo too (A&P, Bio, Microbio, Physics, Biochem, and Chem).

Wanted to pass it along - good luck!

[bluebooger]

• Anatomy & Physiology I | 3 Credits
  
• Anatomy & Physiology I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Anatomy & Physiology II | 3 Credits
  
• Anatomy & Physiology II Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Biochemistry Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Business Communication | 3 Credits
  
• College Algebra | 3 Credits
  
• English Composition I | 3 Credits
  
• English Composition II | 3 Credits
  
• General Chemistry I | 3 Credits
  
• General Chemistry I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• General Physics I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Introduction to Biology | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Biology Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Introduction to Communication | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Nutrition | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Psychology | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Sociology | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Statistics | 3 Credits
  
• Life-Span Development | 3 Credits
  
• Medical Terminology | 3 Credits
  
• Microbiology | 3 Credits
  
• Microbiology Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Organic Chemistry I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Organic Chemistry II Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Principles of Genetics Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Student Success | 3 Credits
  

*Lab kits are not included in this promotion


nothing I want to take is offered

I would have liked
calculus 1
calculus 2
cultural anthropology
art appreciation
survey of world history
intro to C++

[Avidreader]

Aww, a real bummer I already have most of the freebies from Sophia. But I never finished English 2, so the dealnis still good for me.

[Kelly4altcreds]

• Anatomy & Physiology I | 3 Credits
  
• Anatomy & Physiology I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Anatomy & Physiology II | 3 Credits
  
• Anatomy & Physiology II Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Biochemistry Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Business Communication | 3 Credits
  
• College Algebra | 3 Credits
  
• English Composition I | 3 Credits
  
• English Composition II | 3 Credits
  
• General Chemistry I | 3 Credits
  
• General Chemistry I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• General Physics I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Introduction to Biology | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Biology Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Introduction to Communication | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Nutrition | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Psychology | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Sociology | 3 Credits
  
• Introduction to Statistics | 3 Credits
  
• Life-Span Development | 3 Credits
  
• Medical Terminology | 3 Credits
  
• Microbiology | 3 Credits
  
• Microbiology Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Organic Chemistry I Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Organic Chemistry II Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Principles of Genetics Lab* | 1 Credit
  
• Student Success | 3 Credits
  

*Lab kits are not included in this promotion


nothing I want to take is offered

I would have liked
calculus 1
calculus 2
cultural anthropology
art appreciation
survey of world history
intro to C++

Oh no!  That's such a bummer!!!!  I love that SL has Calc and Calc 2

[LevelUP]

I would have liked
calculus 1
calculus 2

I’m not sure the word 'like' and calculus belong in the same sentence unless it’s 'I don’t like calculus.'

[armstrongsubero]

I would have liked
calculus 1
calculus 2

I’m not sure the word 'like' and calculus belong in the same sentence unless it’s 'I don’t like calculus.'

Why don't you like calculus? Especially Straighterline calculus! They has this guy had me laughing my pants off Thinkwell calculus..guy made it really simple and fun....

Calculus is fun once you understand the applications, Try looking at Gilbert Stand's "Highlights of Calculus" I'm sure you would change your mind!!! Calculus is super useful.. Calc I and Calc II, especially in an age of artificial intelligence... wait don't you have a BA in CS!? If you hate calculus you'll forever be stuck in coding!! Joing the Calculus and Linear Algebra crew it's more fun I promise!!!

[LevelUP]

I would have liked
calculus 1
calculus 2

I’m not sure the word 'like' and calculus belong in the same sentence unless it’s 'I don’t like calculus.'

Why don't you like calculus? Especially Straighterline calculus! They has this guy had me laughing my pants off Thinkwell calculus..guy made it really simple and fun....

Calculus is fun once you understand the applications, Try looking at Gilbert Stand's "Highlights of Calculus" I'm sure you would change your mind!!! Calculus is super useful.. Calc I and Calc II, especially in an age of artificial intelligence... wait don't you have a BA in CS!? If you hate calculus you'll forever be stuck in coding!! Joing the Calculus and Linear Algebra crew it's more fun I promise!!!

The math you learn in high school, like algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, is usually enough for 90% of careers. It's also what helps with scoring well on the ACT or SAT.

There’s a utilitarian concept behind teaching advanced math broadly. You never know who might end up working at NASA or creating something that changes the world.

Some majors, such as engineering, require more advanced math, and in those cases, it directly applies to the job.

As a CS major, I had to take calculus. Even with a solver calculator, it was tough. It was the longest and hardest course I took, clocking in at over 80 hours. The instructor on SL was... unique, to say the least.

Calculus does have its uses in computer science. It shows up in AI training, game physics, and algorithm optimization.

But for me, the real fun is in building full apps. I enjoy creating things people can actually use, not tweaking an algorithm to make it 8% more efficient.

[armstrongsubero]

I would have liked
calculus 1
calculus 2

I’m not sure the word 'like' and calculus belong in the same sentence unless it’s 'I don’t like calculus.'

Why don't you like calculus? Especially Straighterline calculus! They has this guy had me laughing my pants off Thinkwell calculus..guy made it really simple and fun....

Calculus is fun once you understand the applications, Try looking at Gilbert Stand's "Highlights of Calculus" I'm sure you would change your mind!!! Calculus is super useful.. Calc I and Calc II, especially in an age of artificial intelligence... wait don't you have a BA in CS!? If you hate calculus you'll forever be stuck in coding!! Joing the Calculus and Linear Algebra crew it's more fun I promise!!!

The math you learn in high school, like algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, is usually enough for 90% of careers. It's also what helps with scoring well on the ACT or SAT.

There’s a utilitarian concept behind teaching advanced math broadly. You never know who might end up working at NASA or creating something that changes the world.

Some majors, such as engineering, require more advanced math, and in those cases, it directly applies to the job.

As a CS major, I had to take calculus. Even with a solver calculator, it was tough. It was the longest and hardest course I took, clocking in at over 80 hours. The instructor on SL was... unique, to say the least.

Calculus does have its uses in computer science. It shows up in AI training, game physics, and algorithm optimization.

But for me, the real fun is in building full apps. I enjoy creating things people can actually use, not tweaking an algorithm to make it 8% more efficient.

Hmmm thats why I said coder..that 8% is what separates a 'coder' from an engineer...

I'll give you an example, right now my entire country cannot process records for something, a large multinational is responsible for the program, like they are HUGE, they sent over 'developers' that struggle to find the problem in thier own software, I opened a debugger, and started looking at runtimes, complexity analysis and deep analysis of thier software and reported my findings...everyone is shocked and they  contacted me and wanted to kmkw if I wanted a position..

Everyone wants to build things people actually use, building it reliable, professional and optimized requires the math skills...Trust Me Bro ™...

Like I say its fine if you know you're staying in web app development, but then one day you'll want to do something besides business logic, which everyone eventually wants...

I'm not saying you might go through your whole career and never need math, but its better to have it than not, especially in the age of AI...

Give you a practical example, an app for our company needed to find the nearest location from ground crew to a station, sure you could fiddle around with map apis and calls and all that jazz, which s the approach a 'coder' on the team took, it was slow and bulky...

Me I looked at it, and was like yeah runtime is too complex, ended up using a json list with the coordinates and took real time gps data directly from the gps sensor on the devices, I smiled cause I was like 'great circle distance problem!' modifed haversine algorithm (some beautifully optimized math) and the algorithm went from about 10s though half a dozen API calls to under 100ms response time! Not to mention saved the company all the money they had to spend on net and APIs (you can pull GPS sensor data without internet access) it saved us literal millions anually...

Another one is a junior on my team wanted to add predictive text, pulled some trash library, tried LLMs and bloated web API calls..I looked at the scope and was like 'why not just use some markov models!? Ever heard of hidden markov models? A week later we had our own optimized internal library that required zero api costs, was tailored for our use case etc etc

Math is like a tool box, like someone who never learned DSA and complexity analysis saying 'when would I ever use all that crap to make my code 5% faster?' 

CS is applied math..trust me you'll open up a world of posiblilies, just like hash maps, queues, lazy loading etc etc math principles are just the same..

Once you understand beyond the plug and chug and start understanding principles...you'll be happy you did...esp in our market, a guy can sit with an LLM and figure out a framework once he has solid skills...a guy eho knows frameworks and what not isn't as important now, it boils down to the base...

You don't know what you dont know right? Givd it a shot...you'll earn more money, respect and confidence...you'll also smile at 'coders' and be like 'step aside junior the engineer is here' 

Try it and you'll be able to build more amazing apps and laugh at people who say LLM is replacing software engineers...coders yea...but math will take you from coder to engineer...

Trust Me Bro ™ 

[huiwh1998]

Are StraighterLine courses proctored?

[Kelly4altcreds]

Are StraighterLine courses proctored?

All of the Straighterline are moving away from Proctoring.

As of last month, none of these Straighterline courses are proctored:


American Gov't
Business Comm
Business Ethics
Cultural Anthropology
Dev. Writing
Eng Comp I & II
Informational Tech Fundamentals
Intro to Biology, and Lab
Intro to Communication
Intro to Ethics
Intro Marking is coming soon
Intro to Psych
Intro to Religious Studies
Intro to Soc
Intro to Human Resources - coming soon
Language and Literacy
Life-span Development
Student Success
Teaching Students with Exceptionalities
US History I & II
Western Civ I & II
Intro to Nutrition
Intro to Philosophy

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Here's the Straighterline promo link for free gen eds:  https://www.straighterline.com/finish-your-degree/