OnlineDegree.com Is Finally Open

[TexasTink]

I'm curious to see how this goes! There's 4-5 classes I want to take, so I'll let y'all know how they transfer in whenever I get them completed. I'm guessing others will get done before me though!
Has anyone else started a course? The course format so far is quite odd. However, I figure I can't go too wrong since it's so cheap!

[acamp]

I started a class just to see the layout. You have to watch every second of the YouTube video without skipping any of off in order to mark off COMPLETED for that lesson portion, correct?

On a side note, many of these classes have around the same amount of lessons (100+) like study.com it seems.

[allvia]

I started a class just to see the layout.  You have to watch every second of the YouTube video without skipping any of off in order to mark off COMPLETED for that lesson portion, correct?

On a side note, many of these classes have around the same amount of lessons (100+) like study.com it seems.

The videos do have closed captioning (for reading) and the option to be sped up to move it along.  I started watching one, and the professor spoke so slowly it was tough to watch.

[eriehiker]

I looked at the data timer in the source code and it seems to require about half the time of the video length to allow for a mark of completion.

[acamp]

I looked at the data timer in the source code and it seems to require about half the time of the video length to allow for a mark of completion.

Interesting - thank you!

[eriehiker]

BTW, that means that speeding up the video to twice the speed is kind of irrelevant because the javascript is requiring a set time in the video, not a percentage of the video watched.

[cookderosa]

I have doubts that other schools will accept them on the Excelsior transcript. It should work for employment and maybe some regulatory requirements, but schools are going to want to evaluate the credits themselves, as we saw when Study.com tried this.

Isn’t that similar to how TESU does it with their credit banking transcript?

Yes, and I wouldn't expect other schools to accept transfer credit "second hand" off the TESU transcript, either. It's mainly useful for employers that want to see that you've taken something in particular. It might work grad school prerequisites in some cases. I also think for cases like CPA licensing, for instance, having the credits on something like this could be useful, but not for transfer.

I would love to be proven wrong, but I think I'm right.

However, any school that accepts NCCRS should accept OnlineDegree's transcript directly.

I second Dave's opinion. Credit banking is probably a waste of $40 - direct is direct. Attending one of the big 3 makes this a non-issue.

[maplefu]

I'm taking the computer science course. There are 160 steps you have to take. That's a lot. Most of the videos are 10min length. So basically you have to spend at least 1600 minutes (26 hours) to finish it. Thinking you are spending 2 hours per day, you need 2 weeks to finish one course. Too long for me.

[jsd]

watch the videos as 2.5x speed

[Merlin]

I'm taking the computer science course. There are 160 steps you have to take. That's a lot. Most of the videos are 10min length. So basically you have to spend at least 1600 minutes (26 hours) to finish it. Thinking you are spending 2 hours per day, you need 2 weeks to finish one course. Too long for me.

Sounds like about the same as one of the more in-depth Study.com courses. Two weeks is about average for a course in any case. Most courses are designed to take 40-80 hours to complete anywhere you go.

If you want to get through the material faster (perhaps you already know a lot of the material) you can just speed up the video (as long as the set time is met, which is apparently half the length of the video, per eriehiker). Then again, you don't really have to watch each one fully (or read the transcript/CC) if you don't care about the "participation" score, which is pretty insignificant. So, given that, you can technically move through a course as fast as you're able to.

Considering that the quiz scores are worth 50%, the final is worth 40%, and "attendance/participation" is worth 10%, as long as you can still max out on the quizzes without (or with less) video lessons, and are confident you can get ≥ 20% on the final, you don't need to worry about the participation score at all and still achieve a 70% passing score. Not to mention, they throw out the lowest two quiz scores before calculating quizzes into your grade, and you'll still get a partial participation award if you watch some of the videos, so that makes it even more reasonable.