The official guide to self-study RA courses from ASU, BYU, UIdaho, etc.

[MNomadic]

At ASU ULC:
BIO 100: The Living World
SES 106: Habitable Worlds


These courses just started so I haven't gone through (all of) the content yet. But I'm not sure I'm going to finish these courses and I wanted to let everyone know that neither of these courses has midterms or final exams. It's essentially all one big assignment-thing on a platform called "SmartSparrow". (Sort of akin to how the ALEKS math courses work.) It's also self-paced in that the entirety of the course contents are available as soon as class starts and you can complete them all as quickly or as slowly as you like as long as you finish by course end. I am not sure if you are able to finalize your grade before course end but I think that you are.

But, if you expect easy, ASU has this to say about both courses:

[This course] is a 4 credit course that counts for ASU SQ credit. Because we designed the course around a “learning by doing” philosophy, you have to do the work to get by - just like in a laboratory class. This is not a class in which you can just take some multiple-choice tests to show you know some facts and skate by with a passing grade.

Because we are developing and deploying novel content using novel technologies, we will encounter some rough edges - bugs and other snafus. We’ll work through them and you won’t be penalized. We apologize in advance, and assure you it’ll be ok. This all adds up to an intense workload. Don’t expect to breeze through. Don’t procrastinate! On that note, all the lessons are open, so technically you can go through the whole course and finish earlier than scheduled.

For Habitable Worlds, it notes that the math you're going to be using is mostly just things like fractions and exponents so it shouldn't be that difficult for people who are at least okay with math.

Video introducing The Living World (formerly called BioBeyond): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wfvXfr9hs

Video introducing Habitable Worlds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVXLYEJ_CWQ

Hey just curious if you have an update on your experience with these courses?