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

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 305: Leadership Communication
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures. 2 papers required
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice questions & the 2 papers
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same
Time taken on course: a couple of weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: I have run a business for 20+ years
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course focuses alot on how the CEO and upper management communicates downwards to the rest of the company in a big organization like Apple. There's a fair bit of theory and some questions about the pro's and con's of handling management in different ways
1-10 Difficulty level: 2ish

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Business
Course content: Text; videos available
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Each section has at least 1 or 2 ambiguously worded/tricky questions, which is pretty high (IMO) for Sophia.
Time taken on course: Several days
Familiarity with subject before course: I'm aware that businesses exist, other than that no business courses before
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: In both the challenges and the milestones there are questions that can trip you up. For instance, in one challenge, a question centers on the downsides of using milk as a currency. The text, using almost the exact same wording, best indicates that the correct answer is one thing. The question says that this is wrong and that the answer is something different that doesn't fit the text as well, IMO. There were a couple of milestone questions where I had to guess because, going by the text, all of the potential answers were at least partially correct. You can still get a good grade on this course, but I dislike these kinds of questions.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Psychology 104: Social Psychology
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures.
Final exam format: 100 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same
Time taken on course: a couple of weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: I have taken a few college psych courses in the past
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This is an intro psych course so it's nothing too crazy. I noticed that on my final by far the 2 most popular topics were schemas and the covariation model of social attribution. Probably 10 questions each for those 2 topics so be sure to hit those hard.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2ish

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Macroeconomics
Course content: Text & Videos
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Okay, I suppose.
Time taken on course: Several days
Familiarity with subject before course: Did not take microeconomics first, maybe I should have
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: If it weren't for Kate and her video tutorials, I don't think I'd have made it through this. I'm still not sure I completely understand what all the (unlabeled) graphs meant. Surprised I passed.
1-10 Difficulty level: 8

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 324: Managerial Communications
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures, plus one written assignment
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same
Time taken on course: a couple of weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: I manage work teams for a living
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course mostly focuses on things like effective small-team communication, teleconferencing, working from home, etc. For some reason there were quite a few questions on the final about the specific differences between Power Point, Prezi, Google Drive, etc, ie which integrated with LinkedIn or whatever. So I guess brush up on that.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2ish

[monchevy]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Business
Course content: Text; videos available
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Each section has at least 1 or 2 ambiguously worded/tricky questions, which is pretty high (IMO) for Sophia.
Time taken on course: Several days
Familiarity with subject before course: I'm aware that businesses exist, other than that no business courses before
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: In both the challenges and the milestones there are questions that can trip you up. For instance, in one challenge, a question centers on the downsides of using milk as a currency. The text, using almost the exact same wording, best indicates that the correct answer is one thing. The question says that this is wrong and that the answer is something different that doesn't fit the text as well, IMO. There were a couple of milestone questions where I had to guess because, going by the text, all of the potential answers were at least partially correct. You can still get a good grade on this course, but I dislike these kinds of questions.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5

OMG. I had the milk question in my head after seeing your review, and just now saw it. You are SO right.

Sorry for diverging from the main topic. I now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Accounting
Course content: Text & videos
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Well-aligned; wrong answers tended to be because I had misread the question
Time taken on course: About a week
Familiarity with subject before course: I had previously attempted an accounting course through a community college. I did not understand the material at all then. I can't say that I will ever become a bookkeeper now, but this was relatively easy in comparison.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Have a paper & pencil handy. You're going to have to jot down numbers to get the answers to some of the questions. The first one and a half to two units are mainly focused on teaching you the terms, the remaining parts are more focused on using those terms to actually do calculations. Still don't quite understand credit vs. debit as pertains to accounting, though.
1-10 Difficulty level: 6

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Macroeconomics
Course content: Text & videos; videos were an absolute must for getting through the course
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Pretty well aligned but some of the concepts were difficult to grasp.
Time taken on course: Several days
Familiarity with subject before course: Nebulous familiarity with the concept of macroeconomics in general. It was not enough.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I probably should've taken Microeconomics first. That might have helped. This was a difficult slog and I only passed by watching the videos. Thank you, Kate.
1-10 Difficulty level: 8


Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Microeconomics
Course content: Text & videos
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Pretty well aligned but some of the concepts were still difficult to grasp.
Time taken on course: A day or two
Familiarity with subject before course: Had previously taken macroeconomics. Mostly the same concepts, only smaller in scope.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was relatively easy (though not the easiest class ever) after taking Macroeconomics first. Still not sure I understand elasticity and Kate's videos were still essential for some sections. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 5

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Statistics
Course content: Text & videos; videos were an absolute must for getting through the course
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Pretty well aligned. 
Time taken on course: 2-3 days. Don't do this.
Familiarity with subject before course: I'd taken Sophia's Foundations of Statistics before; that one was utterly worthless
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: As I suspected, Foundations of Statistics is a watered-down subset of Intro to Statistics; watered down until it makes no sense. I can't say that I fully understand statistics now, but I certainly understand better than after Foundations. Skip Foundations, take this course. Make sure you have Excel, LibreOffice, or some other spreadsheet program installed. You will need it. It helps, to have a second monitor, though that isn't strictly necessary. I found Jonathan Oster's videos the most helpful in understanding the course. Unlike other courses, some sections have extra practice questions in PDF form that you can download for your own learning. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 7

[jsh1138]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Visual Communications
Course content: Standard Sophia format
Final exam format: 26 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same
Time taken on course: a couple of weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: I knew very little about visual communications
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: You get out of these courses what you put in but I actually felt like I learned a good bit from this one. I enjoyed it
1-10 Difficulty level: 3ish