study.com tips for passing quickly?

[Tekky]

Hi all,

I'm using the search feature to just search for posts on study.com and have not come across a post on what the tips and tricks are that everyone uses to pass a study.com course as quick as possible.  Just started taking one and working to figure it all out.  Can anyone help me with the questions below so I can optimize my time with these courses?  I'm sure it will help others as well.

Do people read the passages and not watch the videos?

Do you take all of the chapter test exams or just the quizzes?

Do you take the Placement exam to try and test out?

Do the final proctored exam questions come from the quizzes or chapter test exams or are they completely different?

FOR UL courses that require writing an essay, are there any tips for that?

Any other tips or tricks?

Thanks for everyone's help with this.

[MNomadic]

-Some people just read the passages
-you only need to take the quizzes. For some classes, I took chapter tests to make sure I retained knowledge
-placement exam is a good way to test out of part of the material, especially if you already have some prior knowledge
- a lot of the proctored final questions come from the quizzes, many are similar
-tips for essay: write it. You can submit it and resubmit later after making corrections for a higher grade
-other tips: I watch the videos at 1.5-2x speed while multitasking

[Merlin]

Hi all,

I'm using the search feature to just search for posts on study.com and have not come across a post on what the tips and tricks are that everyone uses to pass a study.com course as quick as possible.  Just started taking one and working to figure it all out.  Can anyone help me with the questions below so I can optimize my time with these courses?  I'm sure it will help others as well.

Do people read the passages and not watch the videos?

Do you take all of the chapter test exams or just the quizzes?

Do you take the Placement exam to try and test out?

Do the final proctored exam questions come from the quizzes or chapter test exams or are they completely different?

FOR UL courses that require writing an essay, are there any tips for that?

Any other tips or tricks?

Thanks for everyone's help with this.

It depends on what you consider "as quick as possible". The easiest and fastest courses are those you already have prior knowledge about... for those some people can finish in as little as a day or two. For most people, courses will take longer. For a course you don't have any prior knowledge in, you should expect it to take anywhere from 40 to 100 hours to complete, so depending on how much time you can dedicate to the subject, you're looking at anywhere from 3.5 days to 3 weeks for a course. I tend to put in 4-8 hours a day, and I can knock out most courses in a week or two.

As for tips, everyone has their own approach, but this is what I do:

1. I skip the videos and just read the text of each lesson. I then take the quiz immediately afterward. If I miss a question on the quiz, I review the material to make sure I understand that concept, then take the quiz again. I may watch the video instead if I need a visual to help with a more complex concept.
   
2. After I finish reading all the course material (which is what typically takes the most time) I go back and read through the lesson summaries and then take the first practice final exam.
   
3. If I miss any questions on the practice exam I go back to the lesson materials for those topics and review again to refresh my memory and/or make sure I got it. I then take the next practice exam. I do this cycle until I get 100% on the practice exam.
   
4. Right before I take the final exam I will review all the practice exams I took. If I don't feel confident at this point (or have extra time), I will also review the lesson summaries again. Then I take the final exam.
   

Things to keep in mind:

• None of the Study.com courses are too terribly difficult. If you pay attention to the lessons and take the practice final exams, you are almost guaranteed a decent score on the final exam. I have yet to get less than a 94% on any final exam, but I tend to overstudy a bit.
  
• Assuming you get 100% on all your quizzes (which is pretty easy to do), you generally only need a 55% on the final exam to pass any course. For courses that have an essay or project, you only need 33% on the final exam if you get 100% on the quizzes and 100% on the project/essay.
  
• Make sure you take the practice final exam at least once, but you can do so up to three times. This is helpful to make sure you have mastered the material, but also because they use the same test bank for the proctored final exam as the practice final exam, so you will often find questions that are identical (or very similar) to those on the final exam included in the practice final exams. I typically see 30-50% question repetition on the final exam.
  

[dfrecore]

I think the big tip to get through courses quickly is to take courses with overlapping material. For instance, if you were to take all 6 marketing courses (Prin of Marketing and then the 5 UL Marketing 3XX courses), they would get progressively faster and easier as you went along. You can do this with all sorts of courses (Accounting, Leadership, math, PoliSci, CJ, History, Psych, and CompSci).

[MNomadic]

2 classes that should be very quick for anyone, regardless of background is the lower level history of Vietnam war and library science 101. Both of those should be doable over a weekend(a couple days tops if you can devote some time to it).

[rlw74]

*Use the study.com app. I would listen to the material while I was doing other things. This saved a lot of time for me.

*If I was using a computer I either listened to it at the highest speed or read the transcript.

*Look for courses with less quizzes if you are running out of time in a month.

*Always take placement tests if you think you will be familiar with any of the material.

*Don't waste your time with chapter tests. They don't count for anything except extra practice. I would only use them if its a tough subject and you think you need extra help.

*Don't worry about getting 100% on every single quiz. I found if I got a combination of 4/5 and 5/5 on each quiz it only made a difference of a single percentage point on the final exam (the difference of needing a 55 or 56%). I never scored less than upper 80s so it never mattered. The extra time to get 100% on the quizzes I found to slow me down too much.

*Take the practice test at the end. It will give you a good gage of how you will do on the final exam. The finals were a bit tougher but I was always within 10% of the practice exam.

I have completed courses in a day or two or taken as long as a week, but I had a lot of free time when I was working through the material. I also found things went a lot faster the more courses I did. Once I felt comfortable with the format it got quicker and quicker. I also found courses started to overlap so I was needing to do fewer and fewer quizzes to cover the material.

[Tekky]

Just wanted to say thank you very much for all that replied so far.  I will certainly be taking the advice.  I now have a few more LL courses then I originally thought(Excelsior MAP is a bit cryptic at first glance) so I am working to do the overlap as well.  Hist 103-104 and UL Hist 306-308.  Should be some overlap as they would not let me take the LL Civil War and Vietnam along with the corresponding UL courses as they said it overlapped too much.  And then the Philosophy Ethics 102 to knock out an ethics requirement.  I will also check out the library science one as well as an easy knockoff.  Did the Sophia Ancient Greek Philosophers already so hoping there is some overlap in the Ethics course at study.com as it touches on some of that material.

Thanks again.

[rlw74]

Just know that even if it doesn't appear there is overlap when you look at the quiz totals, it doesn't mean the material isn't similar. I found this a lot with psychology. There weren't too many quizzes that appeared to overlap and give a whole lot of course progress but the material was so similar that in many cases there was no need to study. Sociology 101 had some overlap with Social Psychology if that helps. And I think one of those has less than 100 quizzes.

[bjcheung77]

2 classes that should be very quick for anyone, regardless of background is the lower level history of Vietnam war and library science 101. Both of those should be doable over a weekend(a couple days tops if you can devote some time to it).

These are two quick courses, another one, if you need the "Oral Communications" component within the degree, there is the Presentation Skills course, it's the easiest/fastest course at Study.com I also agree with the "overlap" in the courses, as most will give you some % of completion if it's related in content.

[MNomadic]

2 classes that should be very quick for anyone, regardless of background is the lower level history of Vietnam war and library science 101. Both of those should be doable over a weekend(a couple days tops if you can devote some time to it).

These are two quick courses, another one, if you need the "Oral Communications" component within the degree, there is the Presentation Skills course, it's the easiest/fastest course at Study.com  I also agree with the "overlap" in the courses, as most will give you some % of completion if it's related in content.

WOW! Only 32 lessons.