The official guide to courses by Straighterline, Study, et al: We want YOUR input!

[Seraphgrim]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Information Technology (3 credits)
Score: 95%
Course Content: The course is available in either a PDF/text or an audio lecture.  There is no other textbook or other materials required other than the ones provided by Sophia.  The course consists of 4 units, each with 3 challenge quizzes of 3 - 5 questions, and each unit concludes with a Milestone exam of 15 - 17 questions.  The class ends with a Milestone final exam of 25 questions.
Final Exam Content: The final exam is a 25 question multiple choice test.  
Final Exam Content vs Course Content/Practice Exams: Overall, the exams and the challenge quizzes closely reflected the course text content.  I had no real issues in this area, aside from a couple situations of "pick the best answer" where I picked something that was correct, but apparently not correct enough.
Time Taken On Course: 1 hour, 35 minutes.  This was the only class of all of my Sophia classes that I didn't bother even answering all three challenge questions for each lesson and just scooted through at light speed.  I did have to do some CTRL+F on the exams where it was really concerned about what job duties are associated with what particular job.  Overall, this class was really easy.  
Familiarity With Subject Before Course: I'm currently wrapping up my Google IT Support Professional Certification and have plenty of life experience with computers and technology, so probably above average.  However, this is a pretty easy class for anyone who is reasonably technologically literate.  
Pitfalls, High Points, Things Others Should Know: This class is pretty short and sweet.  I only had a few hours left in my day and wanted to get another Sophia class done before my membership ended, so I took this just so I had another badge and easily transferable credit, in case any institution wanted to argue with me about my IT Google Support Pro certificate.  Your choice whether or not this is worth it, but it should only take a few hours.  
1-10 Difficulty Level: 2

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: IT Career Exploration
Course content: Text/PDF
Final exam format:  16 multiple choice questions in the single milestone.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The exam questions were nothing unusual; they followed the course content pretty closely. There were a couple of tricky questions but I think they wouldn't have been as tricky if I had read the text more closely. Most of the Challenge questions do seem to have explanations if you select the wrong answer, unlike some Sophia courses.
Time taken on course: A couple of hours.
Familiarity with subject before course:  Pretty well acquainted with IT and tech careers.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There are two Touchstones (assignments) but these are not graded at this time. You do have to complete the Touchstones and submit them in order to finish the course but you don't have to wait for a grade to be returned. Unless/until they change this (check the Score Report for confirmation), this course won't tie up one of your two course slots at Sophia. Although the title of the course is IT Career Exploration, this class is suitable for pretty much anyone. It doesn't go into a lot of depth when it comes to tech terminology, so you shouldn't be scared of it even if you have absolutely no intention of going into a technology field in the future.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2 or 3

[busybee45]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Ancient Greek Philosophers
Course content: Multiple choice quizzes and lectures
Final exam format: Multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Exactly the same
Time taken on course: 2-3 days with copious breaks
Familiarity with subject before course: I have never studied Philosophy before this course.  I started this after starting the Ethics course.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Numerous different philosophers. Understand the key differences between them and their ethical standpoints and you will do fine.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2. Really easy.  Could be knocked out in one day if you dedicated the time to it.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Taking Charge of Your Economic Future
Course Content: PDF/text; no video or audio.
Final Exam Content: There is no final Milestone exam. The last thing you need to do is a Touchstone (spreadsheet), though each unit does have its own Milestone.
Final Exam Content vs Course Content/Practice Exams: Pretty well matched, though the sheer amount of material covered in units 3 and 4 meant that a couple of the Milestone questions came out of left field. I still managed to get an average of 90% in my Milestones, though. 
Time Taken On Course: A couple of days, working off and on.
Familiarity With Subject Before Course: I try to be financially literate, so I was fairly aware of things like how insurance worked and how to make a budget.
Pitfalls, High Points, Things Others Should Know: If you are a mature student, don't get lulled into a false sense of security by how easy units 1 and 2 are. Units 1 and 2 should be pretty easy for most adults; these are things you probably already know. Units 3 and 4 cover the things you wish someone had taught you earlier (like how to choose a retirement account and how writing a will works) and there is a lot of information here. I would highly recommend saving the PDFs for this course to be able to refer to the information in the future. There is a lot of good financial advice here and it's in a MUCH easier to understand format than articles on Bloomberg or Forbes.
1-10 Difficulty Level: 2-3 for adults 25+, 4-5 for students fresh out of high school.

If you've ever seen people tweeting about how they learned in school that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell but they never learned things like how money works, THIS IS THE CLASS EVERYONE WANTS. Even if this class doesn't fit into your degree plan specifically, I really recommend making the time to take it anyway. It's not super long and it packs in a lot of information.

[jch]

Provider: Saylor 
Course: CS402: Computer Communications and Networks 
This course is ACE-recommended again as of a few weeks ago. 
Course content: Links to numerous text and video resources, with self-assessments for each unit. 
Final exam format: 52 questions, multiple-choice. The exams do not contain any of the more difficult question types present in the unit assessments. 
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The final exam questions were significantly easier than the unit quizzes, which is great because those were nearly impossible. The final exam was the same format and setup as the certificate exam, just with slightly modified questions. Definitely take the certificate exam as a practice for the direct credit final. The questions aren't the same, but they're often just asking from the opposite angle or wanting a related fact. 
Final score: 73%, barely passed
Time taken on course: one weekend, just skimming through things I wasn't already familiar with
Familiarity with subject before course: Very familiar. I consider myself quite skilled in networking. I passed my Network+ certification several months ago with a great score. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I wholeheartedly agree with the 2018 review by camjenks. It seems that someone went on a Wikipedia bender to find factoids for questions instead of asking real network administrators. Many of the questions and answer choices left me scratching my head due to their nonsensical or confusing nature. 
Many of the course and exam questions have little relevance to practical modern networking. This course dives deeply into minutia that nobody else does because it doesn't matter. Several topics covered on the exam were things that I've never seen anywhere in my experience or other exams/courses/readings. 
There were copious amounts of grossly outdated topics. Seriously, token ring has been obsolete for decades and has no place on an exam in 2021.  
At least one of the credit exam questions has a clearly wrong correct answer. I've emailed Saylor about that one. Several others had no appropriate answers or were just bad questions. 
The only redeeming quality of this course is the price tag. I don't know if everything on Saylor is like this (this is my first course there), but I would definitely not recommend it. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 8 - This thing is rough!

I took this as a refresher before taking the TESU CMP-354 TECEP. That wasn't a particularly great idea. Due to the above content issues, much of the material from this course was not relevant to the TECEP. I found the CMP-354 exam to be significantly easier and more basic compared to this course.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Relational Databases
Course Content: PDF/text; there are a handful of videos in the course but they are (unfortunately) useless at best.
Final Exam Content: Counting the final milestone, there are 6 milestones with multiple-choice questions. The 1 has 36 questions, 2 has 25 questions, 3 has 21 questions, 4 has 22 questions, 5 has 17 questions, and the final milestone has 25 questions. 
Final Exam Content vs Course Content/Practice Exams: There are a number of questions, mainly in units 3-6 & the final exam, where I could not find the answer in the PDF even after I knew what the answer was. There also seemed to be conflicting information in the PDFs. Is Boyce-Codd Normal Form necessary for 4NF? One section says yes, another says no. 
Time Taken On Course: If you add it all together, probably about a week. I had 28 or 29 days left when I finished the course. 
Familiarity With Subject Before Course: I've already taken some DBMS courses before: Computer Science 303 at SDC and CIS-111 Intro to Relational DBMS at Strayer. This was the most difficult one.
Pitfalls, High Points, Things Others Should Know: You're going to need to keep several tabs open while you go through this course: the course itself, the PDF of the course content, the Sophia database at https://postgres.sophia.org/ and a diff checker like https://www.diffchecker.com/diff. In addition, you might also find https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/ER-diag...nd-meaning to be handy. 
1-10 Difficulty Level: 7 or 8. Do not take this course unless you plan to be a database administrator. 

[MNomadic]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Relational Databases
Course Content: PDF/text; there are a handful of videos in the course but they are (unfortunately) useless at best.
Final Exam Content: Counting the final milestone, there are 6 milestones with multiple-choice questions. The 1 has 36 questions, 2 has 25 questions, 3 has 21 questions, 4 has 22 questions, 5 has 17 questions, and the final milestone has 25 questions. 
Final Exam Content vs Course Content/Practice Exams: There are a number of questions, mainly in units 3-6 & the final exam, where I could not find the answer in the PDF even after I knew what the answer was. There also seemed to be conflicting information in the PDFs. Is Boyce-Codd Normal Form necessary for 4NF? One section says yes, another says no. 
Time Taken On Course: If you add it all together, probably about a week. I had 28 or 29 days left when I finished the course. 
Familiarity With Subject Before Course: I've already taken some DBMS courses before: Computer Science 303 at SDC and CIS-111 Intro to Relational DBMS at Strayer. This was the most difficult one.
Pitfalls, High Points, Things Others Should Know: You're going to need to keep several tabs open while you go through this course: the course itself, the PDF of the course content, the Sophia database at https://postgres.sophia.org/ and a diff checker like https://www.diffchecker.com/diff. In addition, you might also find https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/ER-diag...nd-meaning to be handy. 
1-10 Difficulty Level: 7 or 8. Do not take this course unless you plan to be a database administrator. 

Thanks for the write-up on this one. It definitely looks like it isn't worth it for most people unless they make some changes. It's funny that the web dev course was definitely too easy and this one seems like it was too hard(especially as an intro course). I wish they could have just found a good middle ground for both of them.

[khwaja1924]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Statistics 101: Principles of Statistics
Course content: Material is presented in video format with Quizzes following each lesson. The quizzes can be re-taken. You should aim to score 100% on all of the quizzes. No other text book or material is required; however, I highly recommend watching YouTube videos on the topics that are difficult. 
Final exam format: Multiple choice with 60 questions. You have 2 hours to complete the final exam.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The final exam was difficult. Some of the questions were repeated from the "Final Practice Exams" available on Study.com. There are three Final Practice Exams on Study.com. My recommendation is to attempt all 3 exams and ensure you have a good understanding of the topics being questioned. I would say all of the questions, on the final exam, were covered in the course. However, the breadth of the course, along with memorizing formulas, definitions, terms and concepts made the final exam very difficult to tackle. 
Time taken on course: I spent about 4 weeks taking the course and studying for the final exam.
Familiarity with subject before course: I had never taken a statistics class before; however, I have taken Calculus I, II and III. I've also taken Differential Equations.  I would have failed miserably if I had not prepared. This is a tough course.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know:
Content: I found the videos to be very confusing. The content is difficult. Since the videos have different authors, I felt there was no consistency in the delivery of the topics; it lacked a logical progression of teaching. 
Videos: supplement the content in the course with YouTube and Khan Academy videos. Watch videos on a specific topic and make sure you do problems to get a better understanding. Khan Academy also has topic-specific problems.
Quizzes: aim for a 100% score on each quiz, to eliminate the need to get a high score on the final exam. For example, since I had a 99% final score on all the quizzes, I was required to get only a 56% on the final exam, to pass the course. For the quizzes, you are allowed 3 attempts (they are the same 5 questions and answers, for each attempt). 
Calculator: go online and learn how to use the Desmos Scientific Calculator. You will have access to this calculator on the final exam. So, become familiar with using the calculator to calculate the mean, standard deviation (sample), standard deviation (population), permutations, combinations, and factorials. If you need help using the calculator, there are good Youtube videos available to help with the use of the Desmos calculator. 
Flash Cards: flash cards are available, at the end of the course. You should use them to study terms, definitions and formulas. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 10 (I was very worried about passing the final exam; in the end, I received a 73% (44/60) on the final exam but I studied harder than I've studied for any other study.com course).

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introductory Applied Math
Course content: Text/PDF
Final exam format:  25 multiple choice questions in the single milestone.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The exam questions were nothing unusual; they followed the course content pretty closely. There were a couple of questions that caught me off guard but this was mainly due to my not reading the questions carefully enough.
Time taken on course: Not sure exactly; was completed in between other things.
Familiarity with subject before course:  Fairly comfortable with math.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Roughly similar in content to CSM Learn. This is quite a bit of work for just a single credit, especially if you have difficulties with math! I don't feel like it's appreciably easier than their Algebra course. Actually, it might be slightly more difficult because it mixes in very basic probability/statistics with the algebraic equations. If you need a single credit to round out your degree plan, there are probably worse options out there. But if you want to take this in hopes of bypassing Algebra, just go straight to Sophia's Algebra. You're not really saving yourself any work by taking this course. No matter how comfortable you are with math, make sure you have scrap paper handy if you do decide to take this course. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 1 or 2 if you are comfortable with math, 5 or 6 if you have math difficulties.

[ClayJ]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Relational Databases
Course Content: PDF/text; SQL editor/environment with pre-built tables and data.
Final Exam Content: Counting the final milestone, there are 6 milestones with multiple-choice questions. The 1 has 36 questions, 2 has 25 questions, 3 has 21 questions, 4 has 22 questions, 5 has 17 questions, and the final milestone has 25 questions. (copied)
Final Exam Content vs Course Content/Practice Exams: I didn't pay much attention to the material because I know the subject very well but content looks pretty aligned with exam questions from the very little that I saw - just the ER diagrams are bit confusing as there are multiple versions (while the course goes complex), not always straightforward to understand which ER version the question is referring to.
Time Taken On Course: I did it in 2 days, while working fulltime almost without reading the content, the most time consuming part has been to check on SQL editor (provided by Sophia) the results of demanded queries on tests/modules.
Pitfalls, High Points, Things Others Should Know: As others suggested (and Sophia as well) having several tabs open on browser simultaneously definitely helps : SQL Environment, ER Diagrams expecially cause there is no link during the test.
1-10 Difficulty Level: 2, I'm Data Consultant with 10+ years of experience but I see that can be difficult for someone without SQL/DB/Data knowledge (7-8).