Stupid Study.com Tricks

[icampy]

I don't mind seeing "tricks and tips", I just don't like hearing about how super easy something is, and wonder if that ever affects/has affected any courses getting ace approved, or losing approval, or downgrading. They're already losing UL ratings on some courses(if I hadn't been informed by the great folks here to do a few courses this year, my degree would have been nearly impossible).

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Or distance ed in general.

[aviator guy]

I think study.com is "easy" but not for reasons many might initially believe.

A lot of business courses will have some degree of overlap, and as a result I've seen some of the same topics covered on study.com courses as well as other courses.  Guess what?  The same material is presented.

I do believe that Study.com makes learning easier, which shouldn't necessarily be confused with the course being "easy."  Dividing the material into bite sized chunks, using drill to "set" the new material tends to work out better for the majority of folks.

I just did a quick experiment by doing a word count on a few study.com lessons and compared it to a few random e-textbook pages.  The study.com lessons had about the same amount of actual text (not images, captions, sidebars, graphics and other non-text artifacts) as the textbook did in 4-5 pages.

Considering each Study.com course seems to average about 100 lessons, you're getting the equivalent of a 400-500 page textbook, just broken down into chunks... with a review every few pages.  FWIW, the e-textbooks (excluding the index, glossary, appendices, etc) seem to average... 400-500 pages.

Combine this with the video presentation (some people just learn better this way) and you'll find that people tend to absorb the information much easier and have a much more positive learning experience.

Compare this with other options out there for e learning (here's some books and other crap, have fun... good luck on your test) and I do think it's apparent why people tend to say study.com is "easy" but I don't think they mean what a lot of people think they do. Just because learning is "easier" doesn't necessarily reflect on the material... but on the other hand, it is absolutely a reflection of the teaching style. At the end of the day, shouldn't that be a feather in the cap of learning technology? The ability to present material in a fashion that connects with learners? We all know the difference a "good" instructor can make... in my opinion, the same judgements can be applied to the various methods in e learning.




Just my opinion, and it's worth what you paid for it (several seconds of your life to read it if you made it this far, so it actually has a negative value )

[originalamyj]

Yes! Aviator!!!! Agree completely. It’s not that they are easy courses. They are doable courses. Learnable courses.

[rlw74]

*I listened to videos on high speed. I would put them on auto play and listen to half a dozen, go in and take the quizzes and keep going from there. I did this while washing dishes or exercising.
*I used the app a lot. You can watch, read and take quizzes anywhere, anytime. I could easily go through one or two lessons just about anywhere - even standing in line at the grocery store (its better than reading the cover of the magazines anyway).
*I figured out that you don't need to get 100% on ever single quiz. If you get a combination of 4/5 and 5/5 quizzes you only lose about a point. That means that instead of needing 55% on the final you need 56%. I never scored less than 70% and usually was in the high 80's or 90's. To get the full 100% on the quizzes you need to get every single question in all the quizzes correct. That isn't hard to do but its tedious and for one percentage point it never mattered.
*After you take a quiz you can check the answers by clicking on "print answers". I would read these over and over before I would take the quiz again. It always helped me prepare for the final.
*In the beginning I took all the chapter quizzes which are just a repeat of the quiz questions. Much more telling was taking the practice final - sometimes more than once if I needed to. It was a very accurate indicator if I was ready to take the final.