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

[TopHatWombat]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Business Communication
Course Content: Text tutorials with lesson quizzes, unit tests, and four assignments. This was the most assignments of any Sophia course I've taken, but each was relatively short.
Final Exam Content: No cumulative final exam for this course.  
Final Exam Content vs Course Content/Practice Exams: Not applicable.
Time Taken On Course: The challenges and milestones in this Sophia course were pretty short, so the course material was only about 3 hours. The four touchstone assignments added another 2 hours. 
Familiarity With Subject Before Course: Extensive, coming from the business world and having been a professional speaker.
Pitfalls, High Points, Things Others Should Know: Don't be afraid of the four touchstones. They look a bit daunting at first, but they go pretty quick. The first one actually took the longest. On the last one, the oral presentation, don't overthink it. Just use one of the example topics they provide, and then Google up some material to use for writing a script. I recorded mine just using Zoom (even a free Zoom account has local recording capability).
1-10 Difficulty Level: 3, just because of the quantity of assignments

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

Provider: Study.com
Course: History 308: Causes and Effects of the Vietnam War
Course content: 80 lessons
Final exam format: 100 multiple-choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: I'd say around half as the same wording as the quizzes and practice exams. The others were just making sure you really knew the nitty gritty details of different situations that were covered in the course.
Time taken on course: Three days, done at the same time as History 108.

Familiarity with subject before course: I wrapped up History 108 right before this one, which I recommend. But before that, I had no awareness with regards to specific battles, although the Cold War lead-in and the post-war fade-out were very familiar.

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I'm not entirely sure why 108 and 308 are different courses, since there was ~70% overlap in the lessons, and an entire chapter of the new material just covers how to approach primary/secondary sources. As with 108, take care to note the Geneva Conference outcomes and the tactics that epitomize the major battles. For the essays, I just kept an outline in two different Word.doc files with the rubric and included relevant content from the course materials, along with searching for other primary sources. The questions are very straightforward, and you can choose your preferred topic.

The practice quizzes/tests are mostly very helpful, and I'd strongly suggest doing them to get used to the long paragraph multiple choice options that you'll encounter. However, these tests have some bizarrely incorrect answers--one questions asks "Who were the Viet Cong?" and the correct answer according to SDC is "The guerilla fighters of South Vietnam" instead of "' ' ' of North Vietnam." Maybe if the choices used the preposition "in" instead of "of," there could be an argument for that, but South Vietnam was fighting against the Viet Cong throughout the entire war!

Another question referenced the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and the "correct" response that SDC was looking for was "When Saigon fell, Nixon found himself hamstrung by Congress..." Nixon resigned in '74 and was in no way stewarding the wind-down in '75, so for a service that really loves to throw meticulous multiple choice responses around, it's ridiculous that they float this historically inaccurate option as correct. All of this is in addition to the multiple misspellings strewn about, but enough beating a dead horse.

1-10 Difficulty level: 5? As always, I'd recommend doing the placement tests several times to test out of content, do most of the quizzes and watch some videos anyway, and finally complete all the chapter practice tests and a full practice test right before the real exam. I scored 199/200 on the quizzes + final exam portion by doing this, and without doing those chapter practice exams, I likely would have only earned an 80 on the final. That can make a big difference with the amount of time you want to devote to the two essay assignments.

[TopHatWombat]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Macroeconomics
Course content: Choice of video lectures or text. The videos on this particular course were actually pretty good (at least the few I watched).
Final exam format: 25 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: All the questions on the final were in the quizzes.
Time taken on course: About 4 hours
Familiarity with subject before course: I pay attention to global economic news, and have watched the "Economics Explained" YouTube channel every week for a couple years, which mostly covers macroeconomic issues.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The tutorials in each unit have a lot of repetition. It's easy to spot, since it's literally copy/paste identical, so you can skip it and go to the new material in each lesson.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3, even if you have zero prior exposure

[TopHatWombat]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Financial Accounting
Course content: Four units, text or video. The videos for this course were pretty. "Accounting With Evan" made it go a bit faster. No touchstone (homework).
Final exam format: 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Perfectly aligned.
Time taken on course: About six hours. Went through all the course material.
Familiarity with subject before course: Professionally familiar with about half the material, completely unfamiliar with the other half.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Straightforward course. Very little math, and what there is is just basic arithmetic.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2, maybe higher if you find the subject dreadfully boring

[TopHatWombat]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Managerial Accounting
Course content: Videos with transcripts. Quizzes for lesson, five questions each. 100 question proctored final. No homework assignments.
Final exam format:  100 multiple choice questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Perfectly aligned.
Time taken on course: About eight hours.
Familiarity with subject before course: Zero familiarity with all the manufacturing cost accounting stuff, which was 90% of the course.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was my first Study.com course. I'm not a fan of the cartoon videos, just not my style. The accompanying lesson text is merely a transcript of the video, poorly edited. They really need to have staff go through and edit the lessons, properly separate out mathematical formulas, etc. The lessons within each chapter of the course were extremely repetitive, with the exact same material being presented in sequential lessons. After just coming off doing a bunch of Sophia courses, where the courses were still quick but had some depth to them, this Study.com course was disappointing in terms of what was actually taught. At Sophia, I never felt like I was "cheating" the learning process, but with this Study.com course, I did. Back in 2019 I had posted a thread about the accounting series, and somebody remarked that doing these SDC accounting courses would not give you the depth that you need to actually learn accounting, and I now understand what that person meant. Because of the experience with this course, I'm debating dropping the accounting AOS from my BSBA program at TESU and just finishing the CIS portion with SDC.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4

[TopHatWombat]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Database Management
Course content: Mostly text lessons, some had videos. Quiz for each lesson, five questions each. 70 question proctored final. One homework assignments, which was simple, but somewhat time consuming.
Final exam format:  70 multiple choice questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Pretty well aligned. The final exam did have a disproportionate number of questions pertaining to the NoSQL chapter of the course, which I thought was odd.
Time taken on course: About ten hours.
Familiarity with subject before course: I took a similar class in college 20 years ago, and I've worked with MySQL off and on for 15 years.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was my second Study.com course, and it was much better than the first one. Actually learned some things in this class, and definitely improved my SQL skills. Not a difficult class at all, except perhaps the advanced SQL stuff such as joins and unions. The homework assignment was easy, but requires installation of the MySQL server and workbench software on your PC, plus the capturing of screen shots for each step in the process. That's not difficult, just time consuming.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[origamishuttle]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Database Management

This is the CS303 DB course. I agree that it was surprisingly straightforward to complete, given some familiarity with SQL. It's made even easier if you complete overlapping courses CS107 / CS204 or take the placement exam first.

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 109: Intro to Computing
Course content: 88 lessons
Final exam format: 100 multiple-choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Aligns pretty well.
Time taken on course: Two weeks, absolutely the lowest priority among other things going on.

Familiarity with subject before course: If you know application software, operating systems, computer hardware, basic security and computing history, and can say what a URL is, you've covered half the content already. Databases, network architecture, basic software development approaches, and programming cover the other half. I knew the first half well and had encountered the second half in a TEEX course years ago.

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The practice exams and quizzes align with the final. I felt that database content was an outsized portion of the final exam. But overall, if you've used a computer and taken a class in high school, you're going to be fine here.

1-10 Difficulty level: 2? Ended up with 288/300. If it was an option to simply take the exam cold turkey, probably would have gotten a 275 with the basic background that I had. If you're a pro in the field already, just rush to the final through the placement quizzes and earn this credit quickly.

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Provider: Study.com
Course: Philosophy 101: Intro to Philosophy
Course content: 129 lessons
Final exam format: 100 multiple-choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Aligns well with the final. 
Time taken on course: Two weeks, generally listening to the content only off-and-on during commutes and walks around town.

Familiarity with subject before course: Limited to the chapters covering Philosophy of Science, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Religion, and some of the Fallacy content. I briefly taught workshops on Camus' "The Stranger" in the context of his absurdist philosophy. The rest was generally new content.

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The chapters are arranged according to broad categories, not according to a single thinker's approaches to multiple topics. I can understand the reasoning, but I feel it could have been easier to grasp sometimes if they included reminders of a philosopher's thoughts on other topics that came up in the course and how they aligned and informed their thoughts on the current topic. For example, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hobbes, and of course the Greeks appear all over the place in the course, and I thought a chapter summarizes all of their thoughts would have been informative. The way it's presented now, it makes it easy for students to confuse different perspectives and the context of the philosopher who offered them. Also, be able to distinguish between rationalist and empiricist perspectives.

1-10 Difficulty level: I'd say a 6, based on the organization style used. I finished with 290/300 after going through all the practice exams. If the organization style jives with you, you may not struggle as much.

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Provider: Study.com
Course: Political Science 101: Intro to Political Science
Course content: 130 lessons
Final exam format: 100 multiple-choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Aligns well with the final. 
Time taken on course: Technically five days, but actually completed the bulk of it in two days. Rushed through to reach the final exam.

Familiarity with subject before course: Took AP U.S. Government and History in high school. Also read world news articles daily. 

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There is a lot of overlap with SDC's U.S. Government course, which I also took for review but did not need to test out of. I definitely recommend the placement quizzes in both courses to accelerate through the content here, since it's likely you're already aware of much of it.

1-10 Difficulty level: How about 4? Got a 278/300 since I just rushed through the content. It's basically a rehash of any U.S. Government, Sociology, and some aspects of Mass Communications course(s) you've taken.

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Philosophy 101: Introduction to Ethics
Course content: 11 challenges, 4 milestones, 1 final
Final exam format: 25 multiple-choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Aligns very well with the final. 
Time taken on course: Two weeks from the trial, but everything except that first unit was done in two days.

Familiarity with subject before course: None at all! Exciting!

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The entire course basically follows the same pattern: Introduce an approach to ethics, discuss what positions it holds, show examples of how to apply it, and lastly discuss its relative strengths and shortcomings. The approaches are: Divine Command Theory, Conventionalism, Egoism, Utilitarianism, Kantian Deontology, and Virtue-Based. There's no bias toward any particular approach, and actually feel like it was constructed very well. Questions often take the form of "How would a person who adheres to Approach X address Situation Y?" There's quite a lot of overlap and repetition within any given challenge; entire paragraphs are repeated, so the bulk of the content isn't exactly meaty. I can't really see any need/reason to take the Ancient Greek Philosophers just as a prelude to this course.

I'd also strongly disagree with other reviews both here and on Sophia and argue that the "tricky" questions do have a clear correct response. I missed one question in three milestones, and two in the final exam. I can fully understand why they were marked incorrect, and I feel the course content is very fair. I saw some people slighted the chapter on Virtue-Based Ethics... like, it's not even the virtue signaling they probably meant to pooh-pooh, and isn't the whole point of doing a liberal arts core curriculum to be exposed to new perspectives?

1-10 Difficulty level: I was expecting a slog from prior reviews, but I'd give it a 3-4. It honestly felt extremely straightforward, even for a total newbie.

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Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 110: Business Math
Course content: 71 quizzes
Final exam format: 100 multiple-choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Since it's math, it's pretty hard not to align with the final. 
Time taken on course: Finished half the quizzes in a couple of hours, then got so tired of the sluggish format that it took a week to build up the willpower to get through the rest.

Familiarity with subject before course: Stopped at Calc 3 in undergrad. Also completed college algebra coursework a few years ago as a review. Most of the math applications in a business context shown here were totally new to me, so yay!

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The first half of the course (36/71 lessons) is middle-school math followed by a single chapter on high-school stats. In fact, the first 13 lessons (~20% of the course) are usually covered in most curricula by Grade 5. This knowledge is going to be there for most people, even if it's locked deep down inside. 

The remaining lessons cover depreciation, interest/bonds, financial analysis, and business applications that generally boil down to doing basic multiplication with the odd exponent or two. For me, a lot of this practical application was mostly new ways to rehash old math skills, but if you work in a business context handling numbers, you're golden here too and will likely keep zooming through.

I came into the course very skeptical, wondering why something like Calc 1-2, Stats, Accounting--hell, even College Algebra--couldn't serve as a substitute. I definitely maintained this jaded perspective through the entire first half, because that part is just such a boring gauntlet with mundane quizzes and no placement tests to accelerate progress. After climbing up into the second half, I can appreciate why it's a distinct course.


1-10 Difficulty level: Content: 1-2. Dragging yourself through every single quiz, one after the other: 8.

[Bubbychub]

Provider: Straighter line
Course: General Physics 1
Course content: 116 module segments with a video/text plus a 5 question multiple choice quiz on each segment. All quizzes must have 4 out of 5 correct answers in order to take the final. Grade needed to pass the final is determined by performance on quizzes. Quizzes may be re-taken. Practice exams are available. Larger (25-30 question) practice tests on individual topics are available, as well as a practice final exam. Four exams for 150 points each, one exam for 200 points, followed by the final for 200 points.
Final exam format: Proctored final exam is (I think) 100 multiple choice questions for 200 points
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Very close, many questions will have been seen before. There are some instances where the questions are mirrored from those in the quizzes/practice tests (e.g. What is NOT an example of X/What IS an example of x)
Time taken on course: 2 months
Familiarity with subject before course: common sense understanding of how things work no real physics taken calculus online and survived it but retained very little knowledge
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Heavily calculus based. The course goes into how formulas are derived and how to prove them. It reworks a lot of problems and gives you limited information forcing you to solve for a different problem before you can work the problem that they give you which makes it harder to simply plug in the numbers. It did not mention that tests could be taken three times. I was under the impression they could only be taken once but I was allowed to take them multiple times to increase my score. I believe three is the max. I found this to be a very difficult course and had to study heavily. However, I did good enough on the non-proctored chapter tests so that when I got to the final that was proctored, I was guaranteed to pass. On the final I was able to answer questions I knew quickly and then click the first answer for anything that involved any math. I would recommend taking Physics 1 from SDC. I’m only going to give this a difficulty of eight as opposed to 10 simply because you can work your way through it, bomb the final, and pass.
1-10 Difficulty level: 8

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Provider: Straighter line
Course: General Physics 1 Lab
Course content: Requires a lab kit from Escience Labs ($173 on 05/2022) . There are 10 labs with ten associated quizzes. Labs are not extremely difficult but they can get very complex and require detailed answers. My labs were bounced back to me multiple times for things that made no sense one time I resubmitted the exact same one and I got 100%
Final exam format: no final exam but all labs must be submitted
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams:
Time taken on course: 1 month
Familiarity with subject before course: Common sense understanding of how things work. Concurrently enrolled in physics 1 at straighter line which helped with my understanding of what they wanted. Took calculus online and survived it but retained very little knowledge
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I would not recommend taking this unless you either know physics well or are currently taking a physics 1 class. I found it very annoying because they kept sending my labs back and wanting things reworked that were not really necessary. I found questions to be wrong on a couple of the tests. It is not a particularly hard lab and I found it interesting, but it does require a lot of work when filling out the labs. Once I was guaranteed to pass I tried to submit half-finished or badly done labs, but they made me send in ones that were complete and better written.  I would recommend taking it from somewhere else if it is available.
Difficulty is only five if you are taking a physics class otherwise I would have had to rate it higher.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5

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Provider: Study.com
Course: Physics 112: Physics II
Course content: 13 chapters of material with a 14th chapter labeled studying for physics 112. Within each chapter are 5 to 15 lessons with a 5-question quiz at the end. Quiz can be taken 3 times for a grade, practice tests at end of each chapter, and multiple 50 question practice tests for the final.
Final exam format: I think it was a 100-question test that I needed a 56% to pass based on getting 99 out of 100 points for the quizzes. Multiple choice similar to those in the quizzes but not exactly. Formulas were provided for the test as well as a calculator but not all of them, in particular there were at least four that I did not have on the paper.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Basically, reworded questions. Some slightly more in depth.
Time taken on course: Two weeks Compared to two months for Physics 1 at StraighterLine
Familiarity with subject before course: I had a decent understanding of common-sense physics. In addition I had just completed Physics 1 at StraighterLine.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: . This was significantly easier. This course mentions calculus but does not get into it and does not expect you to prove any of the math. It does have math but it the course is based more on understanding the concepts of the physics involved. Many of the questions are can be answered by simply having a basic understanding of the material that’s presented as opposed to having an in-depth ability to calculate why.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4-5