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The official guide to self-study RA courses from ASU, BYU, UIdaho, etc.
#11
(08-22-2020, 02:17 PM)rachel83az Wrote: If you scroll aaaaaaaaaall the way down to the bottom of the page, you can click "subscribe to this thread" without needing to reply. It's a not very obvious place to put it but it's there. Smile

Ahhhhh, I see it. Thanks!
BS, Information Systems concentration, Charter Oak State College
MA in Educational Technology Leadership, George Washington University
18 doctoral level semester-hours in Business Administration, Baker College
In progress: EdD in Educational Leadership, Manhattanville College

More at https://stevefoerster.com
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#12
Finished both of these earlier this month.

Provider: ASU EA
Course: EXW 100 - Introduction to Health and Wellness
Course content: Videos and PDFs. You also have to post on their forum every week. The posting I maxed out every week, since it's practically free credit and super fast and easy to make posts.
Final exam format: Multiple choice proctored test.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The final is based on the last four weeks, the midterm is based on the first four weeks.
Time taken on course: 8 weeks.
Familiarity with subject before course: I've always been interested in staying healthy. Tons of overlap with articles that I've read over the years.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was an easy course and didn't take up a lot of time. I think I worked on it for an hour or two per week. All of the answers you need are in the videos and PDF's.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2
Final grade: High A

Provider: ASU EA
Course: COM 100 - Introduction to Human Communication
Course content: Videos and PDFs. Forum posting is optional, I think I posted on the forum once or twice and never checked for answers back.
Final exam format: Multiple choice proctored test.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The final is based on all 8 weeks.
Time taken on course: 8 weeks.
Familiarity with subject before course: Not much. I've heard some of the concepts over the years but didn't know much about them.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Took a lot more time than Health and Wellness. Every week you have to write about different scenarios. You basically have two short writing assignments every week. Probably took 3-4 hours per week.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4
Final grade: Low A

I watched all videos at max speed to get everything done as quickly as possible. I also didn't read a good amount of the PDF's completely, I skimmed through most of them. So far 4.0 GPA at ASU after these courses.

I previewed ENG 102 English Composition: Research and Writing for an hour or so. After seeing how much work was involved I dropped it and went with the Sophia version.
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#13
If you guys find any other self-paced online university courses, please post them here.
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#14
I've noticed that ASU has changed the course number for this class. I don't know if that means the content has changed at all or if it was just a course number change. It's probably just a designation change.

Provider: ASU EA
Course: EXW 100 (Now HEP 100) Introduction to Health and Wellness
Course content: Mostly videos with some free PDFs to download. Cerego flash cards. There is also a weekly "case study" where you read a couple paragraphs about a certain situation and then answer questions based on what you learned in the videos that week. There is also a weekly discussion topic that you're supposed to write about for part of your grade. The content is not graded, you simply must meet the minimum word count (I think it was 300 or 350 words total) in 1 post and 3 responses per week. While you should obviously try to write as well as you can, because your grammar/spelling/punctuation isn't graded this is still an easy 5% of your grade 
Final exam format: About 40 or 50 multiple choice questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The final exam draws from the same pool of questions as the weekly quizzes. The same with the midterm. There is some overlap with Cerego content but it is not always exact.
Time taken on course: 8 week course, including finals week.
Familiarity with subject before course: A little. I've been interested in health topics for a while, which is what prompted me to take this course.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I found the first week to be the most difficult. I'm not entirely sure why. After the first week, everything got so much easier for me. I saved the PDFs to read later but I honestly didn't really need to do more than skim them in order to pass the course. The essential one was "Healthy People 2020" or something like that (this may be changed in the new course) in the first week.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-ish. 
Final grade: A - The first week had me convinced that I was going to fail the course but I did much better on subsequent weeks and fairly well on the final exam.
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#15
Provider: ASU EA
Course: MAT 170 - Precalculus (Self paced)
Course content:  Aleks plataform, and i think also videos but i didn't use them. The aleks is great to practice and if you do not understand how to solve the exercise you can see the solution explained. 
Final exam format: RPNOW proctored exam, 25 question, only multiple choise for graphics, most of the question involve to type the solution in a field, for example "2*pi/7". It is important to know that the final exam shows you the trigonometric ecuations at the top of the page, so you don't need to remember several ecuations in order to solve some problems.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Extremely similar, you are not surprised with new content, practice tests help a lot to see the type of problems that will be used in the final exam. (probably the exam is more easy that some of the Aleks problems).
Time taken on course: about 14 days
Familiarity with subject before course:  Strong, I had already done calculus I for engineers at my local university 10 years ago.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The only pitfall could be the problem that most of people have with maths. Short exam (just 25 problems) could also being a problem, in math as much more problems in the exam the factor "un-luck" is reduced. In the other hand, the Aleks plataform is amazing by training you to solve the problems. Something interesting in the final exam is that once you submit que question reply you get the grade for this question instantly (if it is correct or wrong), this is good for reducing anxiety during exam (at least for me), but also means that once you send a relpy you have no chance to recheck and change it. Another thing, maybe it's my brain, maybe it's the type of fonts they used, but on more than one occasion I was simply getting the problems wrong by not seeing that the equations started with a minus sign, by rechecking it the minus sign was always there... pay attention to this.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3 for me, about 7-9 for those who have a hard time with math.
Final grade: B (85%)


This is feedback from someone who really loves math and also has a strong background in math. In particular the feedback is incomplete, I did not use the explanatory videos and therefore I cannot talk about them. 

The course took me much longer than I imagined, I expected to finish it in 5-7 days, they force you to complete 90% of the Aleks content in order to take the practice tests and then the final exam; this 90% is about 350 topics of which you must solve at least 3 exercises each (if you make a mistake in one you must solve more), and if the system understands it so, you must do a couple of exercises on topics that you had already passed. So you will need to solve 1000+ problems in aleks in order to take the final exam.

Anyway I am happy to see a math course this challenging, if you like math go for it; If you don't like it and it hurts you, try to avoid it or invest between 3 and 6 months in the course.
BSBA: 70% completed (84 credits of 120)
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#16
(08-25-2020, 01:58 AM)nomaduser Wrote: If you guys find any other self-paced online university courses, please post them here.

There are threads about self paced universities on the forum. This thread was meant to be about specific coursework.
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#17
When I wrote this, I was going off my transcript and not looking at the course page. The title has changed to (on the EA page listing available courses) "Europe and the Mediterranean: Ancient and Medieval". Looking at the course summary, it appears to be the exact same course as before. 

(08-21-2020, 03:21 PM)rachel83az Wrote: Provider: ASU EA
Course: HST 102 - Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe
Course content: Mostly videos, some downloadable content. Cerego flash cards. Some PDFs that you're expected to download & read but the videos have sufficient content for all but a couple of questions.
Final exam format: Multiple choice. I think there were about 50 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Draws from the same pool of questions as the weekly quizzes so things should be pretty familiar.
Time taken on course: 8 weeks including finals.
Familiarity with subject before course: Some basic familiarity with history but nothing official.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course does not expect you to memorize dates! You're expected to know roughly what happened first/second/third in a sequence of events but you're not expected to remember whether a certain thing happened on the 8th of March or the 3rd of August and in what year. The videos were also pretty interesting and engaging despite history often being a dry subject in school.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2 or 3
Final grade: A. I didn't expect to get this high of a grade but this was, so far, the easiest and possibly the most interesting ASU course that I've taken. It makes me wish that I could take more history classes from the same instructors.
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#18
Provider: ASU EA
Course: CIS 105 - Computer Applications and Information Technology
Course content: About 10-20 minutes of video for the main portion per week + 10-15 minutes Excel videos + selected readings from this free textbook. Cerego flash cards for Excel problems.
Final exam format: 40 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The course must draw from a huge question pool because there was some stuff that I didn't remember having seen before and, thus, had to guess. I had been meaning to re-read the textbook sections from weeks 4-7 but I ran out of time and might have done better if I had revised beforehand.
Time taken on course: 8 weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: Pretty familiar with computers in general but I definitely learned things during this course. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There is a lot of reading for this course. A lot more than previous ASU EA courses I've completed. The PDFs of the textbook make up the majority of the course content. I could not watch the Excel instruction videos and that was disappointing. The audio is poor quality and sounded muffled or muddy when I tried to watch. The Excel videos were not 100% necessary to pass the course but it's unfortunate that I found them to be unwatchable.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4
Final grade: A - The final exam had some tricky questions and I only scored an 80% on the final exam meaning that I just barely got 90% overall.
In progress:
TESU - BA Computer Science; BSBA CIS; ASNSM Math & CS; ASBA

Completed:
Pierpont - AAS BOG
Sophia (so many), The Institutes (old), Study.com (5 courses)
ASU: Human Origins, Astronomy, Intro Health & Wellness, Western Civilization, Computer Appls & Info Technology, Intro Programming
Strayer: CIS175, CIS111, WRK100, MAT210
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#19
(10-13-2020, 11:48 AM)rachel83az Wrote: Provider: ASU EA
Course: CIS 105 - Computer Applications and Information Technology
Course content: About 10-20 minutes of video for the main portion per week + 10-15 minutes Excel videos + selected readings from this free textbook. Cerego flash cards for Excel problems.
Final exam format: 40 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The course must draw from a huge question pool because there was some stuff that I didn't remember having seen before and, thus, had to guess. I had been meaning to re-read the textbook sections from weeks 4-7 but I ran out of time and might have done better if I had revised beforehand.
Time taken on course: 8 weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: Pretty familiar with computers in general but I definitely learned things during this course. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There is a lot of reading for this course. A lot more than previous ASU EA courses I've completed. The PDFs of the textbook make up the majority of the course content. I could not watch the Excel instruction videos and that was disappointing. The audio is poor quality and sounded muffled or muddy when I tried to watch. The Excel videos were not 100% necessary to pass the course but it's unfortunate that I found them to be unwatchable.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4
Final grade: A - The final exam had some tricky questions and I only scored an 80% on the final exam meaning that I just barely got 90% overall.

Thanks for this!
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#20
(08-22-2020, 11:31 AM)dhillbilly Wrote: I took this course around six or seven years ago. Might be different now, your mileage may vary.

Provider: Independent Study in Idaho through University of Idaho

Course: Personality Psychology
Course content: The professor provided written "lectures" to review. There were assigned chapters from the textbook with quizzes that were emailed to the instructor. A low tech course with no bells or whistles, which suited me fine.
Final exam format: Mid-term and final. Non-cumulative. Multiple choice. I don't remember how many questions. The exam requires an approved proctor at either a testing center or a librarian.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The exams were clearly based on his material, no surprises.  
Time taken on course: Self-paced with a year limit. I nickeled and dimed most of that year while I worked on other courses.
Familiarity with subject before course: Mixed, There is usually some overlap in psychology courses. Some material I had seen before, some was totally new. I could not have passed the tests cold.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: A low interaction course, which is fine with me. If you have a question you email the professor. He would normally answer by early the next morning. The quizzes was weighted very low. The exams are pretty much your grade. This course requires a level of self-motivation.
1-10 Difficulty level: The class is not rocket science, but requires the effort to read and study the material to pass.
Final grade: A
How are the Idaho courses priced?
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