new TESU degree - data science (statistics)

[SolarKat]

Statistics.com added mandatory discussion board prompts to Statistics 2 (which started today). This is a change from Statistics 1 and Social Network Analysis, which both ended last month. Previously, only weekly assignment submissions were required. In addition to posting directly to the discussion board, the post must be submitted as a separate file upload. Finally, the due date for the post is different than the weekly assignment submission. This is an issue with Statistics.com in general...the weekly assignments have been due on "Tuesdays, by 2am" (so basically Monday night). The discussion board post and upload are due "Thursday by 2am" (so Wednesday). It's weird enough to have random mid-week deadlines, but multiple random deadlines is a calendar headache. And when I look at the page and see "DUE THURSDAY," it's misleading because for all intents and purposes, it's *really* due the day before. And with Statistics.com, there are NO late submissions - the 'submit' button literally switches off at the appointed hour.

Ugh.

I still love that the classes are only 4 weeks long. The content has been interesting so far. The assignments have been challenging and instructive. I'm just disappointed that they've turned what have been, to this point, really useful discussion boards full of relevant questions and conversation, into mostly inane mandatory, repetitive "discussion" threads that waste my time winding through the 20-odd mostly-similar responses to the single prompt. *Sigh*