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The official guide to courses by Straighterline, Study, et al: We want YOUR input!
Provider: Sophia
Course: Anatomy II + Lab
Course content: The content of the main course is pretty much an adaptation of the OpenStax anatomy textbook with a few short clips from youtube video sprinkled here and there. The labs are interactive simulations on Labster.
Final exam format: 75 multiple choice questions in two hours (maybe a little less time? I don't remember and I can't see the length on the dashboard anymore)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams:  Final exam was a mix of  familiar material and curveballs. They seemed to like to throw a lot of curveballs in this course since everything was open book -- I guess they figure it's a way that students will familiarize themselves with the material before tests, because if you get too many curveballs you don't know how to handle, or at least know where to look up the answer, there's no way you're going to pass the tests in the time limit. To be fair, though, I did not fastidiously read through the text because it was mind numbingly boring and sometimes confusing. More about that below.
Time taken on course: >2 weeks
Familiarity with subject before course:  Somewhat to fairly familiar, though it's been a few years since I actively studied most of these topics, especially in detail.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Wow, this was a slog. And I *like* anatomy. But the way the material was presented, you just had to memorize or half-memorize a lot of stuff without really understanding why things work the way they do. I tried making things easier for myself by watching Khan Academy videos and stuff from interactive biology. They did help, but they weren't detailed enough. About halfway through the course I discovered Ninja Nerd on YouTube and that was a lifesaver. He was 100X better than the text. I would watch the relevant Ninja Nerd videos and then skim over the text. Also, I highly recommend taking this with the lab. For most units, doing the lab before the unit or concurrently is extremely helpful in learning the material. If you are planning to take the anatomy courses and do not want to have a multi month sofia subscription, I recommend doing Khan Academy and ninja nerd before you sign up for Sophia. I had no access to other Sophia courses while I was doing this.
1-10 Difficulty level: 7 or 8
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Provider: Sophia
Course: organizational behavior
Course content: text adapted from the OpenStax textbook and 11 or 12 short case-study videos about a fictional company
Final exam format: I don't remember. They gave plenty of time to finish, though.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Most was familiar, but the questions were terribly written so a lot of times you just had no idea if you picked the answer they were looking for.
Time taken on course: A few days because the assignments were time-consuming
Familiarity with subject before course: I had previously read a lot of the textbook for a different class
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I actually enjoyed the touchstones for the most part (maybe about 55-65% enjoyment). The problem was that Sophia lists so many questions that you're supposed to answer in each assignment that there is no way you can keep it to the low-end of the required word count. As I said elsewhere on this board, the milestones and tutorial questions were frustrating: "Many of the questions are neither aligned with previous types of questions nor with the text, and I spend a lot of time trying to mindread what the exam writer was looking for. Many also have multiple correct answers-- I have flagged as many as I have the energy to for Sophia to look over. Hopefully this is all because it's a new course and they will incorporate feedback, but it is frustrating to be one of the guinea pigs." Doing it over, it might have been less of a headache to go through Study.com.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5—the material itself wasn't difficult, but putting up with the poorly written exam questions and the overly detailed assignment specifications made the experience challenging
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