Straighterline Microbiology Lab Only Course Questions

[cypster]

Have any of you taken this Lab course? I'm about to lose any hair that I have trying to understand it. The bad news I'm only on the first worksheet for Lab 1!!! From what I read in the text for this class the little hair like extensions found on a Prokarote Bacterial Cell that are sometimes used for cell adhesion are called Pili but this is no where in the word bank for this excercise! It turns out that this is the case for several of these questions. I've reached out to SL for help and am still waiting for a response but is this what this entire course will be like? I paid hundreds for the lab kit and over a hundred more for the SL membership and course fee and I can't imagine having to go through this much stress of submitting tickets and waiting for however long it takes to get a response everytime I need help with a simple question. Please help by sharing your experiences with this lab if you have some as well as any resources or tips you may have that can help. How can I get through this lab as quickly as possible?

[cypster]

After speaking with SL this morning it turns out that they get this course content from eScience but here's the kicker eScience refers you back to SL for support. But wait it gets better... SL forces you to submit a support ticket for every single question that you have about the lab. No phone support whatsoever even though this is a clear content issue... I am starting to regret putting almost $400 on the table for this lab...

[turtlepuff1234111]

Personally I have only taken the course through SL, but I was thinking of doing the lab also, had heard of some potential issues of things not matching up but nothing that was that bad. And for chemistry I read many of the reviews from other various random sites (although they could be potentially biased.) Stating some of the things you mentioned.

[cypster]

Personally I have only taken the course through SL, but I was thinking of doing the lab also, had heard of some potential issues of things not matching up but nothing that was that bad. And for chemistry I read many of the reviews from other various random sites (although they could be potentially biased.) Stating some of the things you mentioned.

Hey there turtlepuff. Thanks for the feedback. It looks like taking this course through a regular brick and mortar would probably be a better idea. Sadly I have to deal with it since I've already shelled out so much but this one issue consumed my entire morning and a huge chunk of yesterday afternoon. I consider myself fortunately to have found at least a little help from the folks at eScience Kits which was the group that sells the lab kit used in this SL course. It seems that there was in fact an error on the lab. I realize now however that SL is simply a reseller for the lab that was createed by eSciencelabs and what they've done is added a Pre-lab and a Post-lab to make it more orginal? Jury's out on their rationale. They said they agree that these cellular extensions should be pili and will contact SL to update the pre-lab questions. They also said they will research my other question about the capsule being mislabeled as well. When you call Straighterline for help with this lab it becomes obviously very quickly that they know nothing about the actual content of this course. They refer you to create a support ticket and wait for a response which can take as long as they like. I feel sorry for anyone who takes this course and has multiple questions... I still haven't heard back from the ticket I created... In this course you are pretty much on your own. I'll just keep slaving away at it for now...