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Provider: StraighterLine
Course: General Physics I Lab
This lab course is a standalone 1-credit laboratory Physics I component accompanying SL's General Physics I course. It's the only alt-credit Physics I lab currently available. 
Course content: The course is divided into ten units. Each unit focuses on a different topic or set of concepts within physics. Units include a brief "lecture" slideshow that covers some related material and provides links to lab instructions. Within each unit, students must complete a provided lab worksheet and a "lab exam" unproctored 5-question multiple-choice quiz. The worksheets allow a second attempt (you'll need it). The lab exams allow additional attempts after a time interval has passed and keep the same relatively easy questions. You are told which exam answers are correct or incorrect. 
Time taken on course: This course has one of the worst time/effort/stress-to-credit ratios I've ever encountered. I spent more time on this course than I did on SDC's Physics I&II and TESU's Physics II lab combined. I would have dropped this course and obtained the credit elsewhere if I had other options. I just barely managed to get it done within one month of SL membership, which included more all-nighters than I'd care to admit. 
Compared to TESU's Physics II lab, this course has an order of magnitude more work. There are 29 total experiments across 10 lab activities. By contrast, TESU's Physics II lab has about 7 distinct experiments across its six lab reports. SL also has about double the number of questions per experiment, the questions are much harder to answer, there are additional pre-lab questions, and SL expects far more in-depth responses. They'll often want to receive a paragraph when TESU would be okay with a sentence or just a number. SL wants to see step-by-step work and explanations for many of the problems, turning a 2-minute calculation into a half-hour ordeal. There are some cases where they pointlessly want you to show and explain your work each and every single time you run the same formula, resulting in hours of additional time.  
Familiarity with subject before course: Just before taking this course, I rushed through Physics I and II on Study.com to save money. In the past, I've also taken the CLEP Natural Sciences and a few ASU ULC courses that touched on physics. That background was enough to get me a 100% on the TESU Physics II lab, but it was nowhere near enough to survive this course. I constantly found myself desperately Googling or asking for help. For the first time in my entire college career, I heavily relied on a tutor during this course and could not have completed it without doing so. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Stay away from this course. Spend the money and take the lab at TESU, look at ASU EA's new Physics course, investigate your local community college, or go elsewhere. It will cost a bit more but be well worth it in saved time and frustration. I feared taking a physics lab as a graded course through TESU, and also wanted a faster and cheaper option. This course failed on all three counts. 
SL really made this course a miserable learning experience. The lab worksheets constantly threaten that you will receive a zero on the entire assignment if you fail to conform to SL's exacting, yet sometimes infeasible and nonsensical photo documentation requirements. Once, they made good on this threat, issuing me a zero on a worksheet that I had invested days working on because of a quibble over one of my experimental setup photos. Upon an appeal, they stopped grading all of my work for a week and then issued me a 100 percent on that very same worksheet. That incident really demonstrated how SL's grading policies are arbitrary and capricious, with no respect for student work and effort. 
The lab worksheet questions are an exasperating combination of busy work, errors, confusion, and impossibility. Many badly worded questions left even my expert physics tutor bewildered. Some questions went far above entry-level physics and calculus, plus had instructions that didn't match up or make sense. Wrong equations threw me for loops, and references to experiment steps that didn't exist left me questioning. 
Graders were extremely particular and nitpicky, often not quite liking my approach and taking off a bunch of points as a result. However, on the upside, the graders provided many helpful comments. Those often pointed me to the answer or outright gave it to me for my second attempt. Until my complaint caused things to grind to a halt, my work was often graded within mere hours. 
If, for some reason, you dare to try this course anyway, taking the Physics I course at SL could possibly help you be less lost in this lab. 
Do not purchase your course until you have your lab kit. The lab kit takes 1-2 weeks to be packed and shipped and another week or so to arrive. 
The very first assignment in the course requires uploading a copy of the lab kit purchase receipt and a picture of the unique code inside the kit. You must buy your own (expensive) new lab kit; SL punitively prohibits reselling of the many perfectly reusable materials.  
Take note of the unequal point distribution and pass/fail nature of the course. Concentrate your efforts on the things that are worth a lot of points or are easy. You will get a bunch of stuff wrong; put down your best guess and make corrections on your second attempt if necessary. Take many pictures from different angles and steps, far beyond SL's stated requirements. Include several of them to forestall any issues. 
If you're tight on time, note that, Like SDC, SL's transcript issuance and ACE/Credly badging processes involve manual staff involvement and require several days to complete. I needed a quick physics I lab, but this wasn't it. Because of delays, I may not be able to graduate on time. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 8-9