All Sophia Courses Free as of today - 3-19-20!

[ctcarl]

Just wanted to update anyone who is interested;  I submitted my last English Comp Touchstone on 4-15 and I'm still waiting for that grade.  

As of Tuesday, I found this message while browsing my Dashboard:  "Due to increased Touchstone submissions, grading time can take up to 14 business days for each Touchstone assignment. If you have course completion deadline concerns, please contact the Sophia Learning Coach team."

So it appears I may have some time to wait yet.

Checking my bankcard statement resulted in a pleasant surprise:  The first course I had paid for and completed on 3-19-20 must have gone through just as they switching over to the free promo.  They issued me a refund, completely unasked.  Amazing!

[bjcheung77]

LOL, haha, that's great! You just saved $297 from those three courses!
Yeah, Sophia's awesome, just good news all around with their platform.

[JWells247]

Is anyone racking up credits like crazy on Sophia? I have completed 3 classes this past week. And they are all free. I will keep going!!!*...the statistics course looks nice*

[indigoshuffle]

Just wanted to update anyone who is interested;  I submitted my last English Comp Touchstone on 4-15 and I'm still waiting for that grade.  

As of Tuesday, I found this message while browsing my Dashboard:  "Due to increased Touchstone submissions, grading time can take up to 14 business days for each Touchstone assignment. If you have course completion deadline concerns, please contact the Sophia Learning Coach team."

So it appears I may have some time to wait yet.

Checking my bankcard statement resulted in a pleasant surprise:  The first course I had paid for and completed on 3-19-20 must have gone through just as they switching over to the free promo.  They issued me a refund, completely unasked.  Amazing!

That's fantastic. Good on them for their generosity.

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I like Sophia, but I am getting very frustrated with the turn around time on getting my assignments graded for English Comp I & II. I have yet to receive a single grade back from English Comp I despite submitting my first paper over 25 days ago. I understand that it is free, but thats a very long delay because some of the courses require graded papers to be returned before you can submit the assignments. In turn, this creates roadblocks for future submissions. For instance, in English Comp II, I was able to submit the first three assignments, but I could not submit my fourth, until the third paper was graded. To me this makes no sense because assignment three does not correlate to assignment four in any way.

I have contacted Sophia several times through chat or messaging and yet get any real information. Despite the course being free, I am starting to wish I had just went with Straighterline for these two classes.

I've taken every single course Sophia offers, except for Eng Comp II, and I definitely have an inking of what you're talking about.

Prior to the free promotion, I took Foundations of English Comp.  I was spoiled by the fact that I could complete a Sophia course, click "submit", and see "Congratulations!" along with my final score, instantly.  This may not be unique today but it is rare.

But it took about ten days to get my Foundations coursework scored, and it seemed like a lot longer!

Since I discovered the free courses, I've taken two out of the only other three Sophia courses with Touchstones (assignments), English Comp I and Public Speaking.  So far, the soonest I've gotten anything back has been about two weeks.  Like you, I can't complete my final assignments until all the others are graded, because in my case, one assignment in each course is to revise a previous assignment.

It's especially frustrating for me, because I'm confident that I've completed most of my Gen Ed and Elective requirements and have just UL courses left to work on, but I can't be certain of that until EC has reviewed my official transcripts. 

With that said, I'm trying not to lose sight of the fact that this has been an amazing opportunity for me to finish my LL coursework at zero cost, without leaving my home.  Too, I have to consider that Sophia staff, even if they're working at 100% efficiency despite the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused many other institutions to grind to a halt, must surely be overwhelmed by the response to this promotion.  So I'm keeping my mouth shut and thinking, "they'll get to it when they get to it".

In your situation though, I would say that you have options.  I've found Sophia's customer service to be reasonably responsive and accommodating.  What I'd suggest is that you consider emailing them and asking to drop your English Comp courses.  Then you could take them through Straighterline.

Just for comparison, I took a quick look at the SL Eng Comp I syllabus here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/StraighterLine/...itionI.pdf and it looks like you may be able to submit much of the coursework you prepared for the Sophia course, although you could check with SL to be sure this isn't a violation of the Student Code.  Then you could just consider the free Sophia course as a study aid for the SL one, you should be able to speed through the SL quizzes and submit the papers.  You'd only be out your time, but at least it was time well spent, studying relevant material and writing papers you will likely still be able to use.

To whomsoever this may help, I logged into my study.com account, and I can tell you that the English & Composition courses appear to be more "doable"... I'm reluctant to use the word "easy." If you get a college accelerator account, it may be possible to complete both, which makes it 100 bucks apiece.

[rachel83az]

Is anyone racking up credits like crazy on Sophia? I have completed 3 classes this past week. And they are all free. I will keep going!!!*...the statistics course looks nice*

Definitely working on it! Popped out two easy ones (religion and US History I) and am now working on Eng. Comp I and Algebra (which isn't so nice). I plan to complete the whole shebang.

[LevelUP]

Definitely working on it! Popped out two easy ones (religion and US History I) and am now working on Eng. Comp I and Algebra (which isn't so nice). I plan to complete the whole shebang.

Sophia does seem like the best learning platform for people new to online courses to start. The 1 credit classes don't take long at all.

The English Composition courses are pure hell no matter what platform you use. I haven't heard of anyone on here that has completed those 2 courses in less than 40 hours of hard work. The CLEP, on the other hand, is very easy and only 1 hour of writing and you're done. Mainly people that fail the CLEP run out of time. One person by accident clicked wrong and turned in a blank essay and still passed!

That Sophia US history I like the content but MAN that course is like 3x harder than visual communications. All those questions that had multiple answers, was a real pain in the butt.

Visual communication is about designing and little marketing as well. Has nothing to do with speaking or doing presentations. I really liked that course fit right in with my major and career.

[rachel83az]

The English Composition courses are pure hell no matter what platform you use.  I haven't heard of anyone on here that has completed those 2 courses in less than 40 hours of hard work.  The CLEP, on the other hand, is very easy and only 1 hour of writing and you're done.  Mainly people that fail the CLEP run out of time.  One person by accident clicked wrong and turned in a blank essay and still passed!

That Sophia US history I like the content but MAN that course is like 3x harder than visual communications.  All those questions that had multiple answers, was a real pain in the butt.  

Visual communication is about designing and little marketing as well.  Has nothing to do with speaking or doing presentations.  I really liked that course fit right in with my major and career.

I don't think the English Comp I is bad; it's just boring. I do a lot of writing for work, so most of this stuff is things I already learned waaaay a long time back. Staying motivated to complete everything is a bit of a challenge, but the thought of credit is really nice; I'll have to do it somewhere. And I thought the history was pretty easy, too; but I like history. I'll have to take visual communications and see what that's like.

[ReyMysterioso]

I did US History I and II, Art History I and II, Greek Philosophers, Visual Communications, Conflict Resolution, Environmental Science, Algebra and Religions. It was very doable because I already know a hell of a lot about art, history, ancient Greek history, religions, and I work in visual communications.

I'm going to knock out intro to psych and at least one other.
I already have a BSBA, but half my credits were through Shmoop, which almost nobody accepts anymore. So I'm trying to rack these up while they're free in anticipation of eventually getting a second Bachelor's.

[rachel83az]

I did US History I and II, Art History I and II, Greek Philosophers, Visual Communications, Conflict Resolution, Environmental Science, Algebra and Religions. It was very doable because I already know a hell of a lot about art, history, ancient Greek history, religions, and I work in visual communications.

I'm going to knock out intro to psych and at least one other.
I already have a BSBA, but half my credits were through Shmoop, which almost nobody accepts anymore. So I'm trying to rack these up while they're free in anticipation of eventually getting a second Bachelor's.

I tried to do Shmoop back when it was still accepted. Hats off to you for getting through the courses. Kind of a shame about Shmoop because there are a few things that could've been interesting.

Remember that with Sophia you can register for everything and just keep pushing back the dates until you're able to actually start working on them.

[ctcarl]

Is anyone racking up credits like crazy on Sophia? I have completed 3 classes this past week. And they are all free. I will keep going!!!*...the statistics course looks nice*

Definitely working on it! Popped out two easy ones (religion and US History I) and am now working on Eng. Comp I and Algebra (which isn't so nice). I plan to complete the whole shebang.

Thanks to BJ and his recommendation of Sophia, I've taken everything they offer, except English Comp II.  Still waiting for one Touchstone to be graded, but over 80 credits so far.

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Definitely working on it! Popped out two easy ones (religion and US History I) and am now working on Eng. Comp I and Algebra (which isn't so nice). I plan to complete the whole shebang.

Sophia does seem like the best learning platform for people new to online courses to start.  The 1 credit classes don't take long at all.  

The English Composition courses are pure hell no matter what platform you use.  I haven't heard of anyone on here that has completed those 2 courses in less than 40 hours of hard work.  The CLEP, on the other hand, is very easy and only 1 hour of writing and you're done.  Mainly people that fail the CLEP run out of time.  One person by accident clicked wrong and turned in a blank essay and still passed!

That Sophia US history I like the content but MAN that course is like 3x harder than visual communications.  All those questions that had multiple answers, was a real pain in the butt.  

Visual communication is about designing and little marketing as well.  Has nothing to do with speaking or doing presentations.  I really liked that course fit right in with my major and career.

I'm surprised to hear that.  With everything on Sophia being "open book", I was able to finish courses that would have terrified me previously, like Algebra ("MAAAATH!!") and Statistics.  I found all the history courses enjoyable (compared to Stats, anyway), but then again I do like history.  Intro to Ethics turned out to be my personal hell.  Oh yeah, sure, my newfound knowledge of Kantian Deontology is gonna come in real handy someday.  One bright note for that course (and for Ancient Greek Philosophers, too); years of listening to Monty Python finally paid off.

If English Comp isn't your strong subject, I'd suggest starting with their Foundations of English Comp.  It's a good warmup, particularly if you've been out of school for as long as I have.  As a bonus, it's good for 2 elective credits.

I'll admit that five Touchstones (projects) did seem excessive to me for English Comp I, especially compared to Study.com's three.  Study.com has the edge there.  To be fair, it's not as much of an edge as first appears.  Those five Touchstones are really only four; a narrative essay, a compare/contrast essay, an informative essay, and an argumentative essay.  One of the Touchstones is actually just a revision of your informative essay, and that took me about 20 minutes, based on the excellent, targeted feedback on the draft provided by the instructor.  If anything, my beef with this course has to be the amount of time it took to complete, because you have to wait for your draft to be graded before you can complete and submit the revision.  Realistically, I don't think there's any way to complete this course in less than five or six weeks right now, and even that might be a challenge.  If you're rolling along, cramming for and passing an exam a week or whatever, this one can stop you in your tracks.

I had orignally planned on taking the English Comp CLEP until my school shot it down.  And of course no one is taking any CLEPs right now.

OTOH, is it worth dealing with Study.com's invasive, complicated video proctoring vs. Sophia's unobtrusive, instant biometric proctoring?  And there's the cost factor as well.  Judgement call.