Review of JumpCourse

[dfrecore]

I've been struggling with learning Stats through ALEKS, and need to learn Microecon as well. I did the free lesson for each in Sophia, and liked it, but it's out of my budget right now. I'm not great with flashcards, I actually need to go through the courses and learn the material.

So, I decided to try JumpCourse. The price is ok ($149 if you want to get credit), and they have a 100% money back guarantee. They used to only have test prep, but added courses that count for ACE credit. So far, it's just ok. The dashboard is not as pretty as Sophia's, and I can't switch between courses. If I'm in Microecon, I have to go back to the home page and refresh and then go into Stats - it's inconvenient and weird. The other thing I don't like is that I can't quite figure out how the course works as a whole. Do the quizzes count towards the final grade like Sophia and SL? Or is your entire grade based on the final exam? I have an email out to them, I will see what they say.

I am doing pretty good on the Microeconomics. It is understandable, and in manageable-sized pieces. I like that you can learn via written text or video (although they said that every section may not have a video). You can also do the "Practice" sections before or after you learn the material via text/video. I'm choosing to go through the material and practice afterwards. I like that they mix it up like Sophia, in that there are several different ways they quiz you. I also like that it's very clear which word/phrase you should put in on a fill-in-the-blank question (of which there have only been a few). Sophia had way too many of these that were totally confusing - and couldn't differentiate between words/phrases that should have worked (like it wanted the phrase "marginal utility" but nowhere in the lecture did it use that term, and I put in "utility" so I was marked wrong). You can also continue on past your required 90% in the practice section, and see more problems.

Statistics is a little iffy - right off the bat, the second lesson switched from videos to only having text available. And it was incomprehensible as to how I was supposed to look at this material and figure out what I was supposed to do with it. It showed some info on summation, with no examples of an actual problem, just a picture and small funky explanation, and then when I got to the "practice" section, it made me figure out a summation problem. I had no clue what I was supposed to do at that point. It also had a fill-in-the-blank problem, and I had no clue what the answer was. And guess what? It won't tell you! So I'm going back and forth between the lesson and the practice/quiz, and cannot find the answer anywhere on the page. And it just keeps telling me that I'm incorrect, with no way to figure out what the correct response is. Not a good start to this course.

I will update as I get more info from JumpCourse, as well as get through more of the courses. I will say that in comparison to Sophia, if Sophia had better pricing, I would go with them hands-down at this point for Stats.

If anyone has any info about these courses, I would love to hear about it.

[Al2010x]

I used AC-DC micro and macro economics lectures to study from YouTube and was able to pass CLEP for both. Take a look at that and you may be all set after those. Mr. Clifford's explanation is easy to comprehend and little funny as well so you can't forget them when time comes for test.

[dfrecore]

Update: I got back responses, they were not great, as they did not fully answer all of my questions (or seem to really understand what I was saying). But here goes:

1) Although you must complete the course, and get at least 90% on the quizzes to "unlock" each subsequent section, the quizzes are not counted towards your "grade". It is entirely based on the final proctored exam. Great if you're a really good test-taker, not so great if you aren't and would like all that course work to count towards your grade.

2) Yes, they are aware that you can't switch easily between courses, but didn't seem to care that this is an issue. Maybe not many people attempt 2 courses at the same time?

3) If you sign up for the $99 plan and then want to upgrade to the $149 test, they will just Paypal a $50 invoice to you before taking the test.

4) When I asked about the Statistics questions which I couldn't answer, they responded that "the point of the exercises is to help students achieve mastery and they are never penalized for incorrect answers." How in the world can you achieve mastery of something when you're never told the correct answer??? It's not mastery I'm achieving, it's frustration.

5) I sent a response about the exact question I had, and they responded (within an hour) that I was correct and that they had updated the info on the page to include the information.

Update to come as I complete each course.