Straighterline Introduction to Environmental Science

[NC Coach]

I'm currently going through this course from SL. I have completed the first two quizzes and the mid-term. I was a bit taken aback by the fact that my very first question on the first quiz had 13 possible answers (A through M). Normally a multiple choice exam has 4 (maybe 5) possible answers (A through D, for example). Several of the answers did not even match the question as it asked a person's name and then a lot of the answers were not even names.

I figured that was just a little quirk and moved on. However, during the 25 questions, 10 of them contained a huge number of possible answers, as many as 17 for one question (A through Q). This is 40% of the test! banghead

I reported this to Straighterline and did get an immediate response that they would look into it. To their credit I have only contacted them two times, both on weekends, and received very rapid replies each time. So based on my experience so far they seem to be very good with customer service. I know many of you have used them more than I have and may be able to support that statement or perhaps contradict it.

In any case, going through the next quiz and the mid-term resulted in more of the same issue. While this is not a huge deal to me on an open-book test, had this been a closed book final I feel it could have a very negative impact on a person's psyche. Normally when you don't know the answer you can use the process of elimination to narrow it down. However, with as many as 17 choices, that takes considerably longer.

I'm hopeful that this is a very isolated incident that will be quickly fixed. However, I was curious if I'm the only one who has had that issue or if others have seen the same.

[NC Coach]

Just to update this thread...Straighterline contacted me today and said that the course manager confirmed that a large number of answers for some questions was "intentional". However, I still think something is wrong since the answers presented aren't even in the same category. Example, asking who did something and then the majority of the answers are not even names.

In any case, I certainly hope this is not something that happens in the closed book final exams of courses I have not yet taken. Sorting through up to 17 possible answers just seems punitive. :confused:

[adavis84]

Yuck, that sounds awful. I can't imagine what purpose they think this serves from an learning standpoint. I ran this question by my wife (she has an M.Ed. from a big name school and works in education). She said she's never heard of such a test/assignment design approach.

Somewhat related: I had trouble with the instructional content of a SL course (Calc I). I contacted SL about the videos (produced by a third party, Thinkwell) being out of sequence in such a way that it was detrimental to the course. Another member here also did the same before I did. We both received replies that the "content expert" reviewed the video sequence and said it was correct. My reply with solid reasons why the video sequence made the lessons unnecessarily more difficult (citing the original sequence from the video producers) went unaddressed. However, I now see the course is listed as "Updated." So maybe they got the point?

It's a bummer they seem to spit out questions from the textbook's solution manual without any additional effort to create appropriately challenging assessments. Your experience plus what I dealt with in the Calc course seem to me to demonstrate a lack of attention to detail and interest in creating useful learning tools. Hard to complain at the price/speed, but I quite often feel like they're leaving excellent opportunities on the table.

[Leherself]

Honestly, I haven't been at all impressed with Straighterline on the whole. As a reasonably cheap and fast source of ACE credit, it's not bad, especially since you can do it all at home. As a learning tool, it's terrible. The quizzes don't follow the lectures at all (and on some courses they don't even seem to follow the book all that well), and the weirdly specific questions make it so that learning the material doesn't even necessarily get you a good score on the tests. Pretty much the only skill I've been improving is being able to search ebooks quickly. Heck, at this point I'm pretty much giving up on the economics courses - I'm going to end up CLEP-ing out of those after all, because I just can't handle the sheer *tedium* of so many goddamn long multiple choice quizzes. The Business Communications course has a lot of quizzes too, but they're mostly 10-question chapter quizzes. Whoever designed the economics courses and decided that a 40-question quiz after every single chapter was a good idea is a sadist.

Saylor isn't really better, either, since they haven't apparently figured out the difference between creating a course and creating an electronic encyclopedia of everything that's ever been published on a particular subject.

[NC Coach]

Price, speed and convenience are certainly huge positive factors.

Regarding the "weirdly specific questions" I totally agree. I had at least one quiz question in one of my prior courses that the answer was in a caption under a photo. That was the only place in the book that had the terminology based on my search of the eBook. There have certainly been questions that seem to be focused on searching the book and not overall subject knowledge. That makes me wonder if it's possible to get through some of these without the exact specific edition of the textbook they list.

I'm not going to complain too much as I see this as a great resource overall and honestly I'd prefer to do it this way than test out.

[Turkish]

...That makes me wonder if it's possible to get through some of these without the exact specific edition of the textbook they list.

Yes, it is possible as long as there haven't been any major re-writes. I've used previous and later editions of texts for other classes that weren't the same year, and I found the majority of the text stays the same. However, for the Straighterline business courses they now offer the ebook included for an additional $10. I found it much easier than trying to source copies myself.

One thing I have noticed though in some of my more recent SL tests is that the wording has been updated. It's not exactly the same as the text, a few words have been changed, so searching the ebook became a bit more challenging if you didn't remember where that section was.

[NC Coach]

Yes, it is possible as long as there haven't been any major re-writes. I've used previous and later editions of texts for other classes that weren't the same year, and I found the majority of the text stays the same. However, for the Straighterline business courses they now offer the ebook included for an additional $10. I found it much easier than trying to source copies myself.

One thing I have noticed though in some of my more recent SL tests is that the wording has been updated. It's not exactly the same as the text, a few words have been changed, so searching the ebook became a bit more challenging if you didn't remember where that section was.

That is very good information to have. I did sign up for the accounting next and it includes the book, as you mentioned. For some other classes on my radar I have copies of eBooks that are not the exact edition but hopefully close enough to get through the course. I appreciate you sharing that info.