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The official guide to courses by Straighterline, Study, et al: We want YOUR input!
(09-08-2019, 06:40 PM)suzycupcake Wrote: Provider: Coopersmith
Course: Foundations of Stress Management (UL at TESU, Comes in as SOS-320)
Course content: There are 2 variations of materials - a 770+ page document and a "crash course" powerpoint deck. As with other Coopersmith courses I've taken, you do not need to purchase any addtl materials.
Final exam format: 50 questions, all multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Everything single question was answered in the powerpoint deck. 
Time taken on course: Couple days casually looking over powerpoint but spent about 3 hours today hard core on it 
Familiarity with subject before course: Medium familiarity with materials.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I finished all 50 questions in 4 minutes because I studied the slides. 
1-10 Difficulty level: Based on what I noted above about having all info in slides, I'd say a 1 because it's being handed to you.

Is there a narrated version of the PowerPoint slide? I know they have this for some courses, but curious if that's the case for all of them.
Completed:
BA History & Psychology, Thomas Edison State University, March 2020
ASNSM Mathematics, Thomas Edison State University, March 2020

Up Next:
JD, Cornell Law School, Class of 2024

Link to all credits earned: Link
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(09-08-2019, 06:43 PM)mysonx3 Wrote:
(09-08-2019, 06:40 PM)suzycupcake Wrote: Provider: Coopersmith
Course: Foundations of Stress Management (UL at TESU, Comes in as SOS-320)
Course content: There are 2 variations of materials - a 770+ page document and a "crash course" powerpoint deck. As with other Coopersmith courses I've taken, you do not need to purchase any addtl materials.
Final exam format: 50 questions, all multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Everything single question was answered in the powerpoint deck. 
Time taken on course: Couple days casually looking over powerpoint but spent about 3 hours today hard core on it 
Familiarity with subject before course: Medium familiarity with materials.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I finished all 50 questions in 4 minutes because I studied the slides. 
1-10 Difficulty level: Based on what I noted above about having all info in slides, I'd say a 1 because it's being handed to you.

Is there a narrated version of the PowerPoint slide? I know they have this for some courses, but curious if that's the case for all of them.
I did not see that option on the PPT.
Amberton University, MS Human Relations & Business
Started June 2022

TESU BALS completed March 2020
Study.com (24) StraighterLine (33) Sophia (10) SHU and GCU (26) TEEX (6) Coopersmith (12) CSMLearn (3) TESU (6)
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If you like Coopersmith, you would most likely like Davar as they use to be the same company and split into two or more. Further to that, they use the same type of teaching medium - Powerpoint presentations and an exam for the course... The price is different, it's $70/course + exam proctor fee, for the Business courses, you can get 2 for $99 + exam proctor fee.
In Progress: Walden MBA | TESU BA Biology & Computer Science
Graduate Certificate: Global Management & Entrepreneurship, ASU (Freebie)

Completed: TESU ASNSM Biology, BSBA (ACBSP Accredited 2017)
Universidad Isabel I: ENEB MBA, Big Data & BI, Digital Marketing & E-Commerce
Certs: 6Sigma/Lean/Scrum, ITIL | Cisco/CompTIA/MTA | Coursera/Edx/Udacity

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(09-08-2019, 07:51 PM)bjcheung77 Wrote: If you like Coopersmith, you would most likely like Davar as they use to be the same company and split into two or more.  Further to that, they use the same type of teaching medium - Powerpoint presentations and an exam for the course...  The price is different, it's $70/course + exam proctor fee, for the Business courses, you can get 2 for $99 + exam proctor fee.

WHAT?!?!  That's a steal! I've never even looked into Davar. Thank you BJ!
Amberton University, MS Human Relations & Business
Started June 2022

TESU BALS completed March 2020
Study.com (24) StraighterLine (33) Sophia (10) SHU and GCU (26) TEEX (6) Coopersmith (12) CSMLearn (3) TESU (6)
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Provider: Saylor.org
Course: ECON102: Principles of Macroeconomics
Course content: 7 units, 158 total elements, texts, book chapters, videos and other resourses; plus some quizes that have no influence in grade but help to practice
Final exam format: Proctored final exam is 50 multiple choice questions, also include "similar" practice final exam.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Similarity = 60%-70%. Not as friendly as the microeconomics saylor course that i rate before...
Time taken on course: 16 days, studing between 3-6 hours per day.
Familiarity with subject before course: I just do the Saylor ECON101-Microeconomics course before.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Not as friendly as the Microeconomics course, large, unfriendly, and boring... Some content are out of context slides pretty difficult to understand.
1-10 Difficulty level: 7-8 (unnecessarily high difficulty due to the way the course content was created).

Aditional Information: I think Saylor is not a good option for Macroeconomics course, i just do the Priniciples of Microeconomics course with them before i like it so much, so i give them the chance with the macroeconomics but i think it was a mistake, i have no other reference but maybe it is better to pay for Study.com or SL and get the course in a friendly way. Part of the added difficulty is the boring way the content is carried and sometime you have the feeling that the chapters are messy because they first handle the concepts and then (in future chapters) explain them.


Enough Saylor for me...
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Provider: OnlineDegree.com
Course: Biology- Organisms and Ecosystems (BG101)
Course content: Traditional college lectures, videos from YouTube, chapters from OpenStax Biology, and some recommended readings
Final exam format: No idea, haven't taken it. Trying to decide whether I want to; worried it's as bad as the quizzes (see below).
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: See above. Also, there are no practice final exams, and it was not easy to get information on how much time to allot for the exam or what format the exam would take.
Time taken on course: About 2 weeks while taking other courses simultaneously. You cannot skip or speed through any of the videos, so each of the 14 modules takes 1-1.5 hours minimum, even if that means you are just playing them in the background and not listening
Familiarity with subject before course: medium familiarity—knew some things well and other things were new to me
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The main lectures were good. The short topical videos were taken from YouTube. Some had great information and great presenters, some had great information and annoying presenters, some were basically a paragraph's worth of stuff that was expanded into 5 minutes of pure torture. A couple were completely off topic or inappropriate—a short video on geology that was informative but had nothing to do with plant biology (the unit topic), and a short video featuring an uninformed tirade against Charles Darwin and evolutionary biologists. QUIZZES WERE HORRIBLE. Many questions (usually at least one per exam) had more than one correct answer. Others literally made no sense—they were missing verbs or other important words that would let you know what the question was trying to ask.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5? The first few quizzes were really easy, especially if you are already familiar with the subject or take good notes during the main lecture. But the questions got more and more nonsensical as the course progressed, so then it became difficult—because I had to answer via mindreading, not based on the material I learned.
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Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Statistics
Course content: 5 units, with each unit containing 3-5 sections of content with video-led instruction, pdfs and video transcripts. Each section then has a corresponding "challenge" (quizzes) that are not timed and can have upwards of 10 questions each, which you can then make 3 attempts on each in order to pass. Each unit has a milestone that must be taken, usually has ~20-25 questions. The entire course is open book, including milestones. I believe Unit 5 was the hardest and the milestone for it had some blending of content that tripped me up, but I figured it out and did fine in the end. Just have to think outside the box for a few questions. I did use up the entire 120 minutes for unit 5 milestone, for example, but did complete it doing well. There is A LOT of formulas. They do not need to be memorized, however, each do need to to be worked through, many by hand, which can take a lot of time and steps.
Final exam format: 25 questions, all multiple choice, questions are based on ones you've answered correctly before. I believe it was ~100 minutes. I used up the entire time.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: none - pretty consistent across all content.
Time taken on course: about 4 weeks, working about 10-15 hrs a week.
Familiarity with subject before course: None. This is not a course that can be breezed through quickly, unless you already are familiar with the content, I would imagine. But even then, you still need to do all the challenges and unit milestones in order to unlock the final.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I appreciated that there were multiple teachers to choose from for the lessons, which helped when a concept didn't click right away with one teacher, I could switch to another. Also, some teachers will use a calculator or hand and others will use Excel. It's useful to see the different ways to achieve the same goal. The other thing I did is when I wanted to get through a challenge quickly, I just picked whatever for the question's multiple choice, then saw how it was solved, then used this to answer the next one right. This helped get through the course a bit faster.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5, given that it is open book and non-proctored (uses keystroke biometrics). But I did have to work for it and you do need to understand the material.  And there is a lot that is covered and no way around it. But, I was able to score an 85% for the entire course and went into it rather math phobic, and in the end I fell in love with statistics bc of this course and think that Sophia.org is a wonderful option for those of us that may need a little more than others. 


HTH!!!
BALS (Social Sciences) + ASNSM in CS - Sept 2022 TESU graduate
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Provider: Study.com
Course: Managerial Accounting, Intermediate Accounting I and II, Advanced Accounting
Course content: Wouldn't know, didn't use it.
Final exam format: 70 questions each.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Similar but not identical questions.
Time taken on course: A couple hours each. Helps to open all undone quizzes up and grind through the tabs so you don't have to actively process the amount of tabs you're going through.
Familiarity with subject before course: No familiarity whatsoever.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Just do the quizzes. Don't waste time with the material. You'll pick up what they want you to know by grinding them over and over. Used Google for the Advanced Accounting assignment, which took a few hours more.
1-10 Difficulty level: 1.5.
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Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 202: Intro to E-commerce
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes
Final exam format: 70 questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: the quizzes prepare you for the final
Time taken on course: a couple of days
Familiarity with subject before course: I run a small business and I built our website and run our facebook page
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: there are alot of typo's on this course but you can usually figure out what they're talking about
1-10 Difficulty level: 2. If you know what Amazon and Etsy are, and you know the basics of business, you will breeze through this
Study.com - 177 CR. TESU - 39 CR. Middle Georgia State University - 15 CR. Sonoran Desert Institute - 42 CR. COSC - 6 CR. Excelsior - 6 CR. CLEP - 6 CR. Sophia - 14 CR. TEEX - 2 CR. Shmoop - 18 CR. NFA - 4 CR. The Institutes - 2 CR. FEMA - 20ish


BA in History/English from TESU. 
BA in Communications from TESU. AS in Firearms Technology from SDI.




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(09-30-2019, 06:46 PM)tendrils Wrote: Provider: Study.com
Course: Managerial Accounting, Intermediate Accounting I and II, Advanced Accounting
Course content: Wouldn't know, didn't use it.
Final exam format: 70 questions each.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Similar but not identical questions.
Time taken on course: A couple hours each. Helps to open all undone quizzes up and grind through the tabs so you don't have to actively process the amount of tabs you're going through.
Familiarity with subject before course: No familiarity whatsoever.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Just do the quizzes. Don't waste time with the material. You'll pick up what they want you to know by grinding them over and over. Used Google for the Advanced Accounting assignment, which took a few hours more.
1-10 Difficulty level: 1.5.

This was my experience as well, though I only did the latter 3 as I did Managerial Accounting at Saylor and spent time reviewing.  The assignments for Cost Accounting and Applied Managerial Accounting look daunting, I've never heard of APA style papers. Still waiting to get my grade for the Advanced Accounting assignment, haven't taken the final or most of the quizzes yet.
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