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

[RachelB]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Intro to Information Technology 
Course content: Text. Standard format. 
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's all the same.
Time taken on course: 3 hours
Familiarity with subject before course: I grew up with computers, so I know more than my boomer parents but less than Gen Z. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: It's very easy. The hardest part for me was distinguishing between all the differences in job functions in the computer and technology industry. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

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Provider: Sophia
Course: Intro to Nutrition 
Course content: Text. Standard format.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Same-ish.
Time taken on course: 3 hours
Familiarity with subject before course: I'm health-conscious and read books on nutrition for fun, so I knew virtually everything in this course already.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Some of the nutrition advice was a little outdated.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[RachelB]

Provider: Sophia
Course: U.S. Government 
Course content: Text and videos.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: I felt like there were a lot of "gotcha" questions, particularly on the milestones, where the multiple choice options were worded very similarly to one another, and the wording was quite different than what was in the course content. I probably should have switched the "instructor" from the default Sophia to an actual person, but I was so intent on just getting through the darn thing that that didn't occur to me until later.
Time taken on course: Too long. A good 50+ hours. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I took a high school government course 15+ years ago, and I've watched the first season of Designated Survivor, lol. Politics are not my strong suit.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I felt like my grader was really harsh… like he hated his job and was taking it out on students. His comments were not helpful or educational whatsoever. 
1-10 Difficulty level: For me, probably a 6.

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Provider: Sophia
Course: Human Biology & Lab
Course content: Text - AR (Augmented Reality) Technology material is included, as well, and is optional. I didn’t use these resources at all. 
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's the same.
Time taken on course: The regular course part was super fast. The lab I have yet to do, and will update this after I've finished. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I regularly read about this kind of thing for fun.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: *If you answer a Challenge question incorrectly, there is no explanation for why you got it wrong.*
For the lab portion: Have an updated computer. I had serious issues getting the lab software to work, and have had to drop that part of the course until I can go to the library and use their computers.
1-10 Difficulty level: Regular Course: 2  // Lab: TBD

[jch]

Provider: StraighterLine
Course: General Physics I Lab
This lab course is a standalone 1-credit laboratory Physics I component accompanying SL's General Physics I course. It's the only alt-credit Physics I lab currently available. 
Course content: The course is divided into ten units. Each unit focuses on a different topic or set of concepts within physics. Units include a brief "lecture" slideshow that covers some related material and provides links to lab instructions. Within each unit, students must complete a provided lab worksheet and a "lab exam" unproctored 5-question multiple-choice quiz. The worksheets allow a second attempt (you'll need it). The lab exams allow additional attempts after a time interval has passed and keep the same relatively easy questions. You are told which exam answers are correct or incorrect. 
Time taken on course: This course has one of the worst time/effort/stress-to-credit ratios I've ever encountered. I spent more time on this course than I did on SDC's Physics I&II and TESU's Physics II lab combined. I would have dropped this course and obtained the credit elsewhere if I had other options. I just barely managed to get it done within one month of SL membership, which included more all-nighters than I'd care to admit. 
Compared to TESU's Physics II lab, this course has an order of magnitude more work. There are 29 total experiments across 10 lab activities. By contrast, TESU's Physics II lab has about 7 distinct experiments across its six lab reports. SL also has about double the number of questions per experiment, the questions are much harder to answer, there are additional pre-lab questions, and SL expects far more in-depth responses. They'll often want to receive a paragraph when TESU would be okay with a sentence or just a number. SL wants to see step-by-step work and explanations for many of the problems, turning a 2-minute calculation into a half-hour ordeal. There are some cases where they pointlessly want you to show and explain your work each and every single time you run the same formula, resulting in hours of additional time.  
Familiarity with subject before course: Just before taking this course, I rushed through Physics I and II on Study.com to save money. In the past, I've also taken the CLEP Natural Sciences and a few ASU ULC courses that touched on physics. That background was enough to get me a 100% on the TESU Physics II lab, but it was nowhere near enough to survive this course. I constantly found myself desperately Googling or asking for help. For the first time in my entire college career, I heavily relied on a tutor during this course and could not have completed it without doing so. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Stay away from this course. Spend the money and take the lab at TESU, look at ASU EA's new Physics course, investigate your local community college, or go elsewhere. It will cost a bit more but be well worth it in saved time and frustration. I feared taking a physics lab as a graded course through TESU, and also wanted a faster and cheaper option. This course failed on all three counts. 
SL really made this course a miserable learning experience. The lab worksheets constantly threaten that you will receive a zero on the entire assignment if you fail to conform to SL's exacting, yet sometimes infeasible and nonsensical photo documentation requirements. Once, they made good on this threat, issuing me a zero on a worksheet that I had invested days working on because of a quibble over one of my experimental setup photos. Upon an appeal, they stopped grading all of my work for a week and then issued me a 100 percent on that very same worksheet. That incident really demonstrated how SL's grading policies are arbitrary and capricious, with no respect for student work and effort. 
The lab worksheet questions are an exasperating combination of busy work, errors, confusion, and impossibility. Many badly worded questions left even my expert physics tutor bewildered. Some questions went far above entry-level physics and calculus, plus had instructions that didn't match up or make sense. Wrong equations threw me for loops, and references to experiment steps that didn't exist left me questioning. 
Graders were extremely particular and nitpicky, often not quite liking my approach and taking off a bunch of points as a result. However, on the upside, the graders provided many helpful comments. Those often pointed me to the answer or outright gave it to me for my second attempt. Until my complaint caused things to grind to a halt, my work was often graded within mere hours. 
If, for some reason, you dare to try this course anyway, taking the Physics I course at SL could possibly help you be less lost in this lab. 
Do not purchase your course until you have your lab kit. The lab kit takes 1-2 weeks to be packed and shipped and another week or so to arrive. 
The very first assignment in the course requires uploading a copy of the lab kit purchase receipt and a picture of the unique code inside the kit. You must buy your own (expensive) new lab kit; SL punitively prohibits reselling of the many perfectly reusable materials.  
Take note of the unequal point distribution and pass/fail nature of the course. Concentrate your efforts on the things that are worth a lot of points or are easy. You will get a bunch of stuff wrong; put down your best guess and make corrections on your second attempt if necessary. Take many pictures from different angles and steps, far beyond SL's stated requirements. Include several of them to forestall any issues. 
If you're tight on time, note that, Like SDC, SL's transcript issuance and ACE/Credly badging processes involve manual staff involvement and require several days to complete. I needed a quick physics I lab, but this wasn't it. Because of delays, I may not be able to graduate on time. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 8-9

[RachelB]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Intro to Statistics
Course content: Text. Some videos.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It is more or less the same.
Time taken on course: 20-30 hours?
Familiarity with subject before course: I read lots of nonfiction books that reference studies and samples and such and generally understand what's being communicated but I had zero formal knowledge. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Some of the questions are worded very poorly. There are a lot of typos and grammatical errors in this course. I get that math people generally aren't also English people, but this course needed a much better proofreader. 
1-10 Difficulty level: Maybe a 4? This was a tough class for me in some ways, as some of the differences in definitions were infinitesimal, the various formulas weren’t always clear, and math is just not my thing. Other parts of it were super easy, though, and just boiled down to common sense. It was great that there were no touchstones, though, so it’s straightforward in that way - I didn’t have to worry about the subjectivity of any given grader.

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Provider: Sophia
Course: Spanish 2
Course content: Text.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's pretty much the same.
Time taken on course: The touchstones were semi-time-consuming. Not difficult, just stressful, because the grading is a bit subjective. I spread this out over a couple of weeks.
Familiarity with subject before course: 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Like with Spanish 1, there are two oral assignments where you have to submit a video. Make sure your tech is up-to-date.

For Spanish 1, I had Karen as a grader and she was really great and gave helpful feedback. With this class, I had Fernando and my first couple assignments, I got stock responses that weren’t helpful; then I was graded super harshly for not using specific terminology on an assignment where I was required to put something into my own words. I reached out to the head grader, Darren, and he was rude, passive-aggressive and also super unhelpful.

The phrases and grammar are mostly Spain-based, even though the cultural info includes info about all countries. I was marked off for using the grammar and phrases that are perfectly acceptable in the Central American country where I learned Spanish originally…

I don’t recommend taking Spanish through Sophia if you’re not already familiar with the language.

1-10 Difficulty level: For me, a 3. For someone who doesn’t know the language, an 8.

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Provider: Sophia
Course: Introduction to Ethics
Course content: Text.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's the same. The unit milestones are only 15 questions each, which saves a lot of time.
Time taken on course: 3 hours total.
Familiarity with subject before course: I was familiar with the ideas, but not all of  the terminology.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: A few questions were worded poorly.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2. This was one of the fastest and easiest courses I’ve done.

[RachelB]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Art History II
Course content: Text.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 25 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's the same.
Time taken on course: A few hours?
Familiarity with subject before course: Pretty much nil.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This doesn’t spend nearly as much time as one would think on the “big” artists like Michaelangelo, Warhol, etc. There is a ton of nude art, so if you’re not into that, you might want to choose a different easy elective.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

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Provider: Sophia
Course: Anatomy & Physiology I
Course content: Text. Some videos.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 70 questions (120 minutes).
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: More or less the same.
Time taken on course: 15ish hours maybe.
Familiarity with subject before course: I’ve taken Human Biology and read some books for fun on the subject, but the course is way more in-depth than I first realized.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There’s less time allotted for the milestones than in many of the other courses. The regular milestones are 25 questions and 50 minutes. The final is 70 questions and 120 minutes.
1-10 Difficulty level: 6? I felt like the first 3 units were relatively easy, but the last one kicked my butt.

[Chankosumo]

After over a year from my last review and a now completed UMPI degree, I am happy to be back for a review of a course, and it is the first review here for 2024! Happy New Year! 

Provider: Study.com
Course: Geometry 101: Introduction to Geometry
Course content: Text and videos.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 60 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: final exam was on par with course content.
Time taken on course: about 4 hours a day (2 chapters/day) for 8 days.
Familiarity with subject before course: Some basic math; hardly more than intermediate algebra level.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course is WILD. As it seems, I am only the second person to review it. And chances are that the course now has more chapters than when the other person took almost 2 years ago (I think this is the case because the course now has "v.3" in its name if you look at the ACE website). It is massive - 16 chapters and 142 quizzes if I am not mistaken. The first half is a breeze. It was fun and I have to say I did learn quite a bit for this short period. As chapters progress, however, it gets exponentially more difficult. There are chapters that teach formulas for volume and surface area of many shapes and a chapter "introduction" to Trigonometry. These 2 chapters require extraordinary amounts of memorization. Despite the two fair practice exams I tried right before the final, I was quite unlucky on my final exam - and I was getting too often questions from these exact chapters with formulas. I did substantially worse on my final exam compared to the practice exams. On top of that, I expected to have a Desmos Calculator available during the exam (as it is described in the course syllabus). Well, guess what - I could not find the calculator anywhere in the exam software interface. As the exam was already going on, I simply could not risk failing the exam for having to go grab my own calculator (which is allowed if it's not a graphic one). Calculating volume, surface area, sines, cosines and the rest of the gang without a calculator ... good luck with that lol. Despite all of this, I managed to pass, barely. Thankfully, I did impressively well with the vast majority of the content that did not require memorization of formulas. If anyone plans on taking this course - be aware that it is long (although there is some repetition in videos, which is a good thing). I don't know about you, but if I was to spend more time trying to memorize formulas, I fear that I would then forget the rest of the stuff. In this case and in my opinion, I believe that rushing the course as much as possible is the better way to do it. Surely, this may not be the case for everyone. Parts of the class do assume that one has some basic (and not so basic) math knowledge. I do not suggest taking this course before at least a Sophia-like "Intro to College Math" class. If you want to score well, expect to have to memorize formulas.
1-10 Difficulty level: 6.

Now, where is that Desmos calculator again?

[Chankosumo]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Math 108: Discrete Mathematics
Course content: Text and videos.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 100 questions.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: final exam was on par with course content.
Time taken on course: About 11 days; roughly 1 chapter/day.
Familiarity with subject before course: Like my very previous post, some basic math; hardly more than intermediate algebra level. (Or, should I now include geometry too!  ) 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The course is a breeze compared to the Geometry one I did previously. I had 20 days and 1 exam remaining from my monthly subscription, so I decided to not hurry at all and simply do 1 chapter/day. If memory serves me right, there are about 88 quizzes. Some chapters are longer, others are shorter. It has been mentioned before that the chapter about recursion is quite poor and I do agree. I decided to not bother much with learning this specific chapter as I was quite confident that I will score well enough even if I do poorly with recursion-specific problems. And I was right - the final exam was in the 70s with total score for the course in the 80s. I did not feel at all that I was lacking math knowledge while doing the course (except the already mentioned recursion chapter). This time I did not repeat the mistake to not bring my own calculator. While not a must, I did use it a few times and it served me well. Even if you find that mysterious Desmos calculator that is supposed to be offered for use, I will still suggest to bring your own physical one. This, to me, was an easy class. Learning the theory, bringing a calculator, and ignoring the recursion chapter is the shortest way for me to explain how I managed to pass with no hassles.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2.

[vaticidalprophet]

Provider: SeeMore Impact Labs
Course: CSM Learn 
Course content: A mathematics course based primarily on conceptual reasoning, with some arithmetic and geometry problems. Functionally one very long exam, with natural chapters/breakpoints. Not conventionally proctored. Virtually all free-answers (not multiple choice).
Time taken on course: ~9 hours absolute time, according to the test itself. This was done over the course of a few spurts spaced weeks apart. The course is a one-off payment with no time limit, so you can do it on whatever schedule. Note that SMLI themselves imply 9 hours is an unusually short period; it seems typical of this forum, but they apparently expect most people to take well over 15 hours.
Familiarity with subject before course: In actual "subject familiarity terms", you know this if you're familiar with middle school mathematics and its day-to-day applications. I have very strong conceptual reasoning skills, but mild dyscalculia, so conventional maths classes are hit-or-miss for me. CSM is unusually well-suited to my pattern of skills.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This is a fascinating little program. So far as I can tell, it's responsive -- it tries to predict "how much maths you know" based on how you do on questions, and gives or skips particular units based on your performance. This makes it difficult to say "what CSM will be like" for someone, because there isn't a single standardized test. Even more interesting is that it estimates population percentiles ("only x% of people can do this"); I'm not sure what their norming sample is or how representative it is of the real world, but it's fascinating from a range restriction point of view.

It's mastery-based to an extreme degree. You need to ace every single unit to get the certificate. Considering you have infinite retakes and no time limit, this is more lenient than it sounds...but you still need to do it. If you have a fairly average pattern of maths strengths and weaknesses, you shouldn't assume CSM is the "easy option" compared to an algebra class. If you're the kind of person who freaked out about "word problems" in school, you will hate this. Opinions on CSM seem to occupy an unusually wide spectrum from my "it's great, one of the best maths classes I've ever done" stance to "it was awful, a bunch of riddles and trick questions"; I bet that correlates with numerical vs conceptual reasoning.

The unit conversion questions assume you're American. If you're not, you'll have a much sharper learning curve than the test anticipates. I have a decent intuitive sense of feet and inches (common for people in the metric Anglosphere) and pounds (less common but not unheard of), but units like yards and gallons are pretty US-exclusive. The unit questions assume you're familiar with working in imperial but not metric, and ask to translate from the former to the latter, which will trip you up if you're coming from the other way around.

[RachelB]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Lifespan Development
Course content: Text. Videos.
Final exam format: Multiple Choice. 30 questions. 60 minutes.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's pretty much the same.
Time taken on course: Several hours.
Familiarity with subject before course: I've read on the subject a lot and have plenty of life experience. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Most of the challenge milestones are only 15 questions, so that makes it faster.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[RachelB]

Provider: Sophia

Course: Introduction to Psychology 
Course content: Text. Videos.
Final exam format: There is no “final” milestone. There are 4 milestones total, with a varying number of questions (10, 13, 19, 16), and 3 touchstones.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's the same.
Time taken on course: Several hours.
Familiarity with subject before course: I was very familiar with the content, having taken other psych classes and done reading on the subject for fun.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: 
1-10 Difficulty level: 2. Easy peasy!

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Provider: Sophia

Course: Introduction to Psychology 
Course content: Text. Videos.
Final exam format: There is no “final” milestone. There are 4 milestones total, with a varying number of questions (10, 13, 19, 16), and 3 touchstones.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It's the same.
Time taken on course: Several hours.
Familiarity with subject before course: I was very familiar with the content, having taken other psych classes and done reading on the subject for fun.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: 
1-10 Difficulty level: 2. Easy peasy!