The official guide to courses by Straighterline, Study, et al: We want YOUR input!

[brendyn_porter]

Hi! I'm currently in a crunch to get a US History II credit, and need some input. I heard about Straigterline through a friend who was taking Spanish for credit at our university. I see on the straighterline website that there are two US History II courses. One of them is for $109 with Professor Jerry Israel, and another for $59 with no professor mentioned. I saw before that the exams are open book for History II, but didn't know if there was a difference betweem the two courses, or if it didn't matter. If someone, ir multiple people cojld give some insight, I would REALLY appreciate it!
Thanks, everyone! 

[suzycupcake]

If you just want to test out of it, don’t pay extra for the professor. It’s an open book test.

[brendyn_porter]

All I needed to know! It will be my last course, and then I will have my degree! Thank you!

[jsh1138]

US History 2 from Straighterline is awful. I took it all the way through to the final and got so disgusted with it that I just stopped and took US History 2 from Study.com instead. Study.com's is not great either though.

I posted a review of it earlier on this thread:

"Straighterline's version also has a really weird focus issue where it looks at *everything* through the eyes of minorities & poets & authors and it makes their coverage of eras and issues really weird, to say the least. For instance, it describes the Great Depression starting, tells you all about it, how terrible it is, how everyone lost their jobs, etc. Then there's a section on how it affected black men, which boils down to "they lost their jobs too". Then, how it affected black women. They lost their jobs, it turns out. Then how it affected Mexicans. Then Mexican Americans. Then Chinese Americans. Then Japanese Americans. Then, iirc, Filipino Americans. It just seemed really silly after awhile

Also the section on the 20's-30's literally only mentions the Mafia in the context of mafia movies that were popular at the time. America's involvement in World War 1 is basically "we went to Europe and won WW1", no description of battles, of generals, nothing. Its very bare bones but then gives you something like 8 different black poets who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance. On the mid-term there were literally more questions about black poets than WW1, I counted. That's absurd. "

[suzycupcake]

You must’ve read the book. I didn’t. Just took the tests and was done in a day.

[brendyn_porter]

You must’ve read the book. I didn’t. Just took the tests and was done in a day.

So, you just went straight to the test, while using the book and did fine?

[runningtherace2]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 109: Intro to Computers
Course content: standard study.com stuff
Final exam format: 100 multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The final is based on the course work pretty closely
Time taken on course: about 3 days while working full time
Familiarity with subject before course: I have used computers for 20+ years 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Some of this stuff is absurdly simple, like what a keyboard is, or what a microphone is, and some of it is very complex. Also this course had more typo's on the tests than any other study.com course i've taken. One was on the "right" answer to a question but the answer was literally gibberish. I reported it so maybe they'll fix it
1-10 Difficulty level: 5ish for me. I know all about computers from the user end but some parts of the course, like naming 5 programming languages and asking which was best for a given task, were well outside of my experience. your mileage may vary

Yeah...I took that one from them earlier this year, and although I use a computer/phone/ipads/etc., I had hardly any knowledge about much else (guess I'm a typical un-tech-y person :  ...Anyway, I'd rate it 5-ish for me too--  just because there were a lot of things I wasn't familiar with (computer history; programming lang.; etc.) and by the end of the course I felt like a lot of things were blurring together...but yes, there were also a ton of easy-peasy things like what a mouse is, 2 diff. kinds of printers, vector v. raster images, etc. I bet those of you who are more tech-savvy would easily breeze through this course.

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Okay...I have been vainly trying to figure out how to start a new thread...but I haven't been successful...so I'll ask my question here.

I'm a college student in my sophomore year, and I'm only one year out of "homeschool high school", and I'm getting credits via CLEPs, study.com, etc.
So I did Study.com for a few months' stint earlier this year, and it was great. However, I needed to pause my account a while back, and the longest "pause" was up to three months from the pausing date. So I did it-- and it saved my progress and paused my billing. So, the account resumed a few weeks ago and I've been chugging along just fine. 

But I wanted to know if it's possible to pause your account more than once during your study.com membership. From all that I've researched, it looks like they only allow you the convenience of pausing ONCE for however long you're a student using Study.com. Am I understanding this correctly, or is my deduction flawed??

Any feedback would be much appreciated!

[jsh1138]

I've paused my membership several times

[suzycupcake]

You must’ve read the book. I didn’t. Just took the tests and was done in a day.

So, you just went straight to the test, while using the book and did fine?

Yes. That’s exactly right.

[brendyn_porter]

I'm about to start US History II, and I'm totally doing this for the credit and not the knowledge, if we're just being honest. So, do I need to read the book and take notes for the test even though the test are open book, or could I just take the test, and look up the answers in the book as I go? THANKS, EVERYONE!