UND Independent Study Math?

[adavis84]

I've seen a few mentions of people taking UND independent study, but I haven't found any "reviews" of the experience. Does anyone care to share some details about their experience? Or perhaps experience with UND self-paced courses other than math?

I'm looking for self-paced, letter-graded, Calc and UL math options to transfer to TESC. I realize the letter-grades won't impact the TESC GPA, I'm more concerned with grad school pre-reqs being letter-graded and my cumulative GPA (which is in need of repair thanks to my 20 year old self's lack of forward thinking).

[adavis84]

Since there doesn't seem to be much first-hand info on these courses, I decided to sign up for one to test it out. There is a 30 day no-penalty drop/full refund policy so I figured I would have nothing to lose if there was something I didn't like about the structure. Since there seemed to be some interest expressed by other members about these courses, I plan to leave a sort of rolling review as I go along. I settled on Discrete Mathematics as the first course I will take there. If it goes well, I will likely take others as well.

Course:
MATH 208 Discrete Mathematics
3 sh, letter-graded (P/F option available), online, independent study, prereq of College Algebra or Precalc.

Costs:
$266.17 per credit ($798.51 course total)
One-time $35 enrollment fee for distance learning at UND. There are no other fees.
My total cost: $833.51
There are no books or software to purchase for this course. All materials are provided.

Registration Process:
Very quick; very simple. You may only take up to 15 total credits as a visiting student. After that, you must enroll. Visiting student registration is very straight forward. They ask for the basics (name, address, SSN), a list of schools attended and dates of attendance, HS graduation information, and the name of the institution/course for your completed prereq. They did not require transcripts of any kind. I listed "CLEP College Algebra" as my prereq and I was never asked to verify it. I signed up and paid for the course on a Friday and was given access to the course the following Wednesday.

Course Rundown:
The course description (found here) says most of what you need to know, but I'll flesh it out a little. In total, there are 21 graded assignments. Of those, 18 are graded homework assignments (25% of total grade), and 3 are proctored exams (each 25% of total grade). After every 6 lessons, there is an exam covering only those 6 lessons. There is no comprehensive final.

Lesson Structure/Pacing:
The 18 lessons each have assigned reading (a PDF for each lesson is provided), links to lecture videos from various sources, sample problems, and "hints". Each lesson has an assignment which you are to hand write, scan, and submit as a PDF through Blackboard (there are options to use US mail if preferred, however I will not be reviewing that option). Once submitted, assignments may not be edited. The stated turnaround on grading is "typically 2 - 3 days" and "frequently within 24 hrs." You may submit no more than 3 lessons per 7 day period.

Exam Structure:
All three exams are proctored (see policy). Their policy seems very straightforward. Each exam covers only the preceding 6 lessons and has a 2 hour time limit. The questions are primarily T/F and multiple choice, with each exam having 3 "long answer problems". Nothing but the exam packet is permitted during the exam (no books, notes, calculators, or scratch paper are allowed). The expected wait for test grading is 10 days. I am under the impression that you are allowed to continue submitting lessons while waiting for exam grades.

First impressions:
I got access to the course yesterday (Wednesday) and completed/submitted the first lesson immediately that afternoon. I found the reading to be more detailed/challenging than the Discrete Mathematics Demystified I had been reading, but somewhat less detailed than the Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, 7th ed I had started reading to prepare for taking the course at TESC. I feel the homework problems were appropriately challenging. Not push-overs; not overly difficult. The lesson materials aren't great, honestly, but adequate. Because the video lessons are from other sources, rather than specifically designed for this course, it's a little clumsy (ex: a formal logic video used a different style of notation than is provided in the lesson).

Overall: so far, this course looks good. I'm not thrilled with three proctored exams, but I think I can live with it.

I plan to revise/flesh out my review of this course (and the UND IS structure) as the course progresses. Hopefully, this will be helpful to someone!

[bluebooger]

... I found the reading to be more detailed/challenging than the Discrete Mathematics Demystified I had been reading, but somewhat less detailed than the Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, 7th ed I had started reading to prepare for taking the course at TESC. ...

that was an awesome review

informative, nicely detailed and written

ha, you should read the "most helpful" review (by Michael Yasumoto on May 24, 2009) for that book on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathemati...b_title_bk

really looking forward to hearing more about the course

[adavis84]

Tomorrow will mark two weeks into the course, so I figured I'd leave a little update. As of today, I've completed, submitted, and received grades for the first 4/18 assignments. Last week was also my finals week for the four courses I was taking at a local B&M, so I had very little time to devote to this course. I hope to stay as close to the "three assignments per seven days" limit as I can from here on out. I guess we'll see how realistic that goal is as the material increases in difficulty.

Homework:
The homework follows a "five question plus one optional extra credit question" format. The points awarded for the assignment cannot exceed 100, so the extra credit serves only as a buffer for points off on one of the first five questions. So far, I've managed 100% on everything. The first four lessons were on logic/proofs. I can't really judge the difficulty of the course fairly yet because I have already taken a full-term course in logic and needed very little review. I should have more to share on this as the material progresses.

Instructor:
The instructor has been very quick in grading and has stayed true to the "typically 2 - 3 days" and "frequently within 24 hrs" grading turnaround claims. I haven't needed to seek the instructor's help yet, and since my lessons have been 100%, I've not received any feedback/corrections from him. The best I can say regarding instructor feedback/helpfulness at this point is: N/A. As the material becomes more challenging and I have more opportunities to interact with him, I imagine I will have more useful-to-others things to say on this.

Instruction/Materials:
The provided course text is very good. It is to-the-point without being prohibitively brief and simple yet not overly-so. The same goes for the supplementary texts (worked examples and "hints"). The supplementary videos range in quality and helpfulness, but on the whole have been helpful. Again, because they're pieced together from moocs/youtube videos, I feel they are less effective/helpful than if they had been designed specifically for the course and in correspondence with the text. However, I don't imagine the course could be developed with such materials while staying at it's relatively low price, so I'll leave it at: they get the job done. If you're the sort who finds that lectures are essential to your learning, this course may lack just a little for you since the videos serve more as an auxiliary than as core content.

tl;dr
So far, so good. More to come!

[adavis84]

LONG overdue update on this course!

(the tl;dr version is at the bottom)

I had to put all my studies on hold starting early June '15 until about New Years. The original pace at which I intended to progress through this course was dashed, but life happens. I've had more than one person PM me about this course since then, so I believe this info is still useful and desirable to at least a few people. As such, I intend to continue and finish the review.

In any event, I picked up right where I left off, and took advantage of the one-time, three moth extension the UND IS program allows for the course. The course allows nine months to complete without the extension, twelve months with it.

If nothing else, my interruption lends to this review that this course truly is self-paced and can be returned to after a long break as if nothing happened.


Homework:
I'm up to lesson 12 (of 20) now. We've progressed from the logic and proofs (with which I was already familiar making it tough for me to judge the content and learning materials) on to relations, functions, recursion, induction, and intro to algorithms. Much of the content was new to me in these chapters. I'm still at 100% for all of them, but have had a few corrections sent back as well. Everything you need content-wise can be found in the provided course materials, however, I found that supplementation with the Discrete Mathematics Demystified
book I have is a powerful tool in my understanding.

In particular, I found the induction chapter to be a brute. The instructor even notes in the assignment that he considers it one of the most challenging in the course and reduces the number of questions in the homework accordingly. I was still able to score 100%, though.

One tip I can provide is to do the optional extra credit problems for every lesson. They have made my 100% streak possible.

Instructor:
The instructor has been very quick to grade assignments, as before. I have received some feedback from him on the homework. He is very concise and too the point. I have not needed to follow up with him yet, so I can't speak to how helpful he may be if you get stuck. With any luck, I'll never need to know


Proctored exam:
I took the first (of three) proctored exams as well. The process was a little clumsy, but I shift most of the responsibility for that onto the local CC I used. Follow the instructions provided by UND, and be prepared with your UND login info when you go. They need you to log in for the proctor who prints the test for you. There is little room for mistakes in the process, but we stumbled through it. I now know how to help the future proctors having done it once. As always, YMMV.

The exam is paper based. No scratch paper or calculator allowed. You won't need a calculator for anything, so don't worry. I would have liked scratch paper (mostly because I'm a neat freak with assignments and can't stand erasure marks). I nearly tore through a page erasing while working out a problem. I wish they would allow a scratch sheet (simply requiring the proctor to destroy it would prevent people from copying down the problems).

The exam was challenging, frankly. Having received perfect marks on my assignments leading up to it, I felt confident. I left knowing I had at least one partially incorrect answer for a "long answer" problem. The "long answer" problems are structured just like the homework.

The grading claims to take 10 days, but mine took less than a week. I received an 85/100. I was a little surprised by how low that was. The other thing I was surprised by was no exam feedback. Given that there is no cumulative final, I suppose it doesn't matter because I won't revisit the subjects in this course. However, I'm deeply interested in the content of this course and want full understanding of everything. I understand that sharing the questions or answers outside of a proctored environment compromises the test (which I believe is the same exact test for all takers), but I feel left in the dark.

tl;dr
Took an unexpected break, but I'm back at it!

The material is increasingly more challenging, but understanding is certainly attainable with a little effort.

I find that outside resources (like other discrete math text books) are very beneficial in my understanding of the material because the provided course materials are somewhat sparse at times. YMMV.

Always do the extra credit problem (even though it is optional).

The exams are to be taken seriously. I went in confident, but came out uncertain and with an 85/100. There is no exam feedback. This is a bummer for me, but manageable.

[inf]

LONG overdue update on this course!

(the tl;dr version is at the bottom)

I had to put all my studies on hold starting early June '15 until about New Years. The original pace at which I intended to progress through this course was dashed, but life happens. I've had more than one person PM me about this course since then, so I believe this info is still useful and desirable to at least a few people. As such, I intend to continue and finish the review.

In any event, I picked up right where I left off, and took advantage of the one-time, three moth extension the UND IS program allows for the course. The course allows nine months to complete without the extension, twelve months with it.

If nothing else, my interruption lends to this review that this course truly is self-paced and can be returned to after a long break as if nothing happened.


Homework:
I'm up to lesson 12 (of 20) now. We've progressed from the logic and proofs (with which I was already familiar making it tough for me to judge the content and learning materials) on to relations, functions, recursion, induction, and intro to algorithms. Much of the content was new to me in these chapters. I'm still at 100% for all of them, but have had a few corrections sent back as well. Everything you need content-wise can be found in the provided course materials, however, I found that supplementation with the Discrete Mathematics Demystified
book I have is a powerful tool in my understanding.

In particular, I found the induction chapter to be a brute. The instructor even notes in the assignment that he considers it one of the most challenging in the course and reduces the number of questions in the homework accordingly. I was still able to score 100%, though.

One tip I can provide is to do the optional extra credit problems for every lesson. They have made my 100% streak possible.

Instructor:
The instructor has been very quick to grade assignments, as before. I have received some feedback from him on the homework. He is very concise and too the point. I have not needed to follow up with him yet, so I can't speak to how helpful he may be if you get stuck. With any luck, I'll never need to know


Proctored exam:
I took the first (of three) proctored exams as well. The process was a little clumsy, but I shift most of the responsibility for that onto the local CC I used. Follow the instructions provided by UND, and be prepared with your UND login info when you go. They need you to log in for the proctor who prints the test for you. There is little room for mistakes in the process, but we stumbled through it. I now know how to help the future proctors having done it once. As always, YMMV.

The exam is paper based. No scratch paper or calculator allowed. You won't need a calculator for anything, so don't worry. I would have liked scratch paper (mostly because I'm a neat freak with assignments and can't stand erasure marks). I nearly tore through a page erasing while working out a problem. I wish they would allow a scratch sheet (simply requiring the proctor to destroy it would prevent people from copying down the problems).

The exam was challenging, frankly. Having received perfect marks on my assignments leading up to it, I felt confident. I left knowing I had at least one partially incorrect answer for a "long answer" problem. The "long answer" problems are structured just like the homework.

The grading claims to take 10 days, but mine took less than a week. I received an 85/100. I was a little surprised by how low that was. The other thing I was surprised by was no exam feedback. Given that there is no cumulative final, I suppose it doesn't matter because I won't revisit the subjects in this course. However, I'm deeply interested in the content of this course and want full understanding of everything. I understand that sharing the questions or answers outside of a proctored environment compromises the test (which I believe is the same exact test for all takers), but I feel left in the dark.

tl;dr
Took an unexpected break, but I'm back at it!

The material is increasingly more challenging, but understanding is certainly attainable with a little effort.

I find that outside resources (like other discrete math text books) are very beneficial in my understanding of the material because the provided course materials are somewhat sparse at times. YMMV.

Always do the extra credit problem (even though it is optional).

The exams are to be taken seriously. I went in confident, but came out uncertain and with an 85/100. There is no exam feedback. This is a bummer for me, but manageable.

I see in your signature you have taken edX: Intro to Dif. Eq., Linear Dif. Eq.
Can you tell me what TESU has evaluated those classes into? Thanks!

[adavis84]

Sure thing: TESU followed their ACP equivalency chart (Alternative Credit Project). "Intro" came in as MAT-333 (3SH) and "Linear" came in as MAT-399 (3SH). I wasn't able to take the third course in the series due to some extended travel, but I understand that it also comes in as MAT-399 (additional credits, not duplicate).

I'm not sure if edX / BU will ever offer those again, but I'm glad I took them and I learned a ton. They were an excellent price with very good content.

[dfrecore]

You have to take those courses as "live" classes, and they've only been live once. They are still available as archived courses (I think) but those won't count as ACE-approved.