Provider: Saylor.org
Course: BUS303: Strategic Information Technology
Course content: Several outdated textbooks, a bunch of random articles and youtube videos (most 30 minutes to an hour). Mostly reading, and a lot of it.
Final exam format: 50 question multiple choice, proctored by ProctorU (Oh god that was a nightmare)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Not similar to the unit quizzes at all. Those quizzes are essay prompts with some sample ideas for you to review after, but frequently it's just a brief statement and then refers back to the massive amount of reading material. The practice final was pretty similar (60 questions instead of 50), and some of the questions appeared on both, so definitely study that practice final.
Time taken on course: Studied for about a week and a half, failed the final. Took a break and came back and reviewed specifically what was on the test, barely past on the second attempt.
Familiarity with subject before course: I was really familiar with almost everything presented in this course. The IT stuff was very familiar to me from my career (cloud, servers/clients, etc.). The Business aspects I had covered extensively in the TESU BSBA capstone, so it was a lot of review, but mostly it was learning the strange definitions for things that the textbooks gave (SWOT, 5 forces, PEST, etc.).
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The final exam was mostly quizzing you on random sentences pulled from any of the sources, but you'd have to remember that exact sentence word for word to get it right because several answers that could be correct are also choices, but just not the sentence that the question was pulled from. Even though I felt it was vague, I did find several nearly word for word in the course material for some. However, other parts of the course contain material that supports other answer choices. Also, some were nearly word for word from the textbook but also marked the answer wrong even if you selected that. It's a tough test, so just count on some luck. Some have said that Saylor will adjust your score, that has not been my experience, but maybe I just didn't quite get close enough or something (missed by 3 questions last time). They emailed me back after 3 weeks and said they'd pass it on to someone else, but that was all I got.
The course in general felt very disjointed, disorganized, and definitely outdated. They pull from so many sources, and many of those sources define things differently or present conflicting ideas. This makes the test harder. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I had planned it before there were so many study.com options, and I already had it planned as UL, so I went ahead. It's not worth it to learn because the course is not good, and it's not worth it for the credits because the test is not good. I know I'm being hard on Saylor. I respect what they're trying to do, and I've heard some of their other courses are better. That's great, but this course just isn't up to par.
1-10 Difficulty level: The course material is not difficult at all. There's just a lot of it. 5 for the material because it will take some time to get through and memorize all the different conflicting definitions for things related to business processes. Test I have to say 8 because it's hard to pass even if you prepared extensively.
P.S. ProctorU was having some sort of outage. It took an hour to get the chat window to work (it would just pop up and say "Disconnected."). After that it was half an hour to get my Microphone working in the browser window. I just had a webinar at 3 today, so I know the microphone was good. They're always nice and I try to be friendly to the poor overworked proctors, but their system was not running smoothly today.
Course: BUS303: Strategic Information Technology
Course content: Several outdated textbooks, a bunch of random articles and youtube videos (most 30 minutes to an hour). Mostly reading, and a lot of it.
Final exam format: 50 question multiple choice, proctored by ProctorU (Oh god that was a nightmare)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Not similar to the unit quizzes at all. Those quizzes are essay prompts with some sample ideas for you to review after, but frequently it's just a brief statement and then refers back to the massive amount of reading material. The practice final was pretty similar (60 questions instead of 50), and some of the questions appeared on both, so definitely study that practice final.
Time taken on course: Studied for about a week and a half, failed the final. Took a break and came back and reviewed specifically what was on the test, barely past on the second attempt.
Familiarity with subject before course: I was really familiar with almost everything presented in this course. The IT stuff was very familiar to me from my career (cloud, servers/clients, etc.). The Business aspects I had covered extensively in the TESU BSBA capstone, so it was a lot of review, but mostly it was learning the strange definitions for things that the textbooks gave (SWOT, 5 forces, PEST, etc.).
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The final exam was mostly quizzing you on random sentences pulled from any of the sources, but you'd have to remember that exact sentence word for word to get it right because several answers that could be correct are also choices, but just not the sentence that the question was pulled from. Even though I felt it was vague, I did find several nearly word for word in the course material for some. However, other parts of the course contain material that supports other answer choices. Also, some were nearly word for word from the textbook but also marked the answer wrong even if you selected that. It's a tough test, so just count on some luck. Some have said that Saylor will adjust your score, that has not been my experience, but maybe I just didn't quite get close enough or something (missed by 3 questions last time). They emailed me back after 3 weeks and said they'd pass it on to someone else, but that was all I got.
The course in general felt very disjointed, disorganized, and definitely outdated. They pull from so many sources, and many of those sources define things differently or present conflicting ideas. This makes the test harder. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I had planned it before there were so many study.com options, and I already had it planned as UL, so I went ahead. It's not worth it to learn because the course is not good, and it's not worth it for the credits because the test is not good. I know I'm being hard on Saylor. I respect what they're trying to do, and I've heard some of their other courses are better. That's great, but this course just isn't up to par.
1-10 Difficulty level: The course material is not difficult at all. There's just a lot of it. 5 for the material because it will take some time to get through and memorize all the different conflicting definitions for things related to business processes. Test I have to say 8 because it's hard to pass even if you prepared extensively.
P.S. ProctorU was having some sort of outage. It took an hour to get the chat window to work (it would just pop up and say "Disconnected."). After that it was half an hour to get my Microphone working in the browser window. I just had a webinar at 3 today, so I know the microphone was good. They're always nice and I try to be friendly to the poor overworked proctors, but their system was not running smoothly today.
TESU BSBA CIS - March 2019
Clep: College Algebra, Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, History of U.S. I, History of U.S. II, Principles of Management, Introductory Sociology, College Composition, American Government, Financial Accounting, Principles of Macroeconomics, Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Marketing, Information Systems, Introductory Business Law, Introductory Psychology, Western Civilization I, Spanish Language, Biology, Social Science and History, Precalculus, Calculus
Study.com: FIN-102 Personal Finance, FIN-101 Principles of Finance, ACC-102 Managerial Accounting, BUS-308 Globalization and International Management, CS-302 Systems Analysis and Design, CS-303 Database Management, COM-120 Presentation Skills in the Workplace, BUS-113 Business Communication, STAT-101 Principles of Statistics
OnlineDegree.com: Computer Science CS101
Saylor.org: CS402, BUS303, CS302
Certs: CompTIA A+, Net+, Sec+, Linux+, MCSA, LPIC-1, CCNA
TESU: BUS-421 Business Administration Capstone
Clep: College Algebra, Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, History of U.S. I, History of U.S. II, Principles of Management, Introductory Sociology, College Composition, American Government, Financial Accounting, Principles of Macroeconomics, Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Marketing, Information Systems, Introductory Business Law, Introductory Psychology, Western Civilization I, Spanish Language, Biology, Social Science and History, Precalculus, Calculus
Study.com: FIN-102 Personal Finance, FIN-101 Principles of Finance, ACC-102 Managerial Accounting, BUS-308 Globalization and International Management, CS-302 Systems Analysis and Design, CS-303 Database Management, COM-120 Presentation Skills in the Workplace, BUS-113 Business Communication, STAT-101 Principles of Statistics
OnlineDegree.com: Computer Science CS101
Saylor.org: CS402, BUS303, CS302
Certs: CompTIA A+, Net+, Sec+, Linux+, MCSA, LPIC-1, CCNA
TESU: BUS-421 Business Administration Capstone
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