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

[Supermind]

Provider: Study.com
Course: 101-Intro to Psychology
Course content: The usual study.com content. Nicely presented videos followed by quizzes with 5-6 questions. 108 lessons in all.
Final exam format: 100 questions. Multiple choice. No Essay.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Questions are partly from the lessons/chapter quizzes, and many new questions too.
Time taken on course: About a week. I had a lot of free time. It should probably take 10 or more days for others.
Familiarity with subject before course: Never heard of it before taking the course. Learned many new things. Overall, the course laid a good foundation for other specialised Psychology courses like Growth and Development Psychology. This course gives an overview of the major methods and approaches in this field.
How would you have scored on the final with no preparation? I might have not passed the exam.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I particularly enjoy the lesson summary at the end. For many chapters, just revising the summary part helped. But sometimes, the summary is too brief, and one might need to read through the lesson as a whole. There are some important points not covered in the summary.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4.

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Provider: Study.com
Course: 103- Human Growth and Development Psychology
Course content: Usual study.com content. Very well presented. Quite an extensive course that covers several areas of human life from prenatal to adulthood to old age. 95 lessons in all. Some lessons overlap with Psych 101 course. But many new lessons offering a lot of understanding into language learning, childhood development stages etc.
Final exam format: 100 questions. 120 minutes. Multiple choice. No Essay.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Questions are partly from the lessons/chapter quizzes, and many new questions too.
Time taken on course: About a week. I completed this course alongside Psych 101. So, the two courses kind of complemented each other.
Familiarity with subject before course: Never heard of it before taking the course.
How would you have scored on the final with no preparation? I might have not passed the final exam.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Nothing in particular. I guess Study.com generally does not try to test memory. They seem to test understanding of concepts more. So, questions pertaining to the exact years when some Psychologist developed their theory are usually not to be seen in the exams. Although, they do appear some times.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4-5.

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Provider: Study.com
Course: 104- Social Psychology 1
Course content: Usual study.com content. Very well presented. Felt quite simple. 91 lessons in all. Many lessons overlap with Psych 101 & Psych 103 courses. But many new lessons offering a lot of understanding into social behaviour.
Final exam format: 100 questions. 120 minutes. Multiple choice. No Essay.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Questions are partly from the lessons/chapter quizzes, and many new questions too.
Time taken on course: About a week. I completed this course alongside Psych 101 & 103. So, it felt easy.
Familiarity with subject before course: Never heard of it before taking the course. Like I said, some concepts featured in the other Psych courses.
How would you have scored on the final with no preparation? I might have not passed the final exam.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Nothing in particular. I guess Study.com generally does not try to test memory. They seem to test understanding of concepts more. So, questions pertaining to the exact years when some Psychologist developed their theory are usually not to be seen in the exams. Although, they do appear some times.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4.

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: History 105: US History from Settlement to Present Day
Course content: 137 quizzes. Standard Study.com stuff
Final exam format: 70 Multiple Choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Seems the same
Time taken on course: Literally 5 min. See below
Familiarity with subject before course: I've taken both American History 1 & 2, as well as both Study.com Civil War courses and both Study.com Vietnam courses
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: If you've done the above Study.com courses, you will have completed 135 of the 137 quizzes for this course. The 2 that are left literally take 5 min to complete. Assuming you remember the material from the previous courses, you've already tested out of everything on the final. I did notice that the final had more questions about the HW Bush and Clinton years than any other period of US history, but if you are old enough to remember that time period, that's no problem. If not, might want to bone up on it.
1-10 Difficulty level: 1

[dutchman]

Provider: Straighterline
Course: Calc I
Course content: No textbook. Material is presented through Thinkwell calculus videos with Edward Burger and then practice problems via ungraded quizzes. The course consists of four-chapter tests, 1 midterm, and a final, which are all timed. You can retake the first exam as many times as you want up to the point of taking the final exam. The final exam is the only proctored test of the 6 graded tests in total.
Final exam format: The final exam is 40 questions, multiple choice (all tests are multiple choice) and proctored.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The difficulty of the final was pretty consistent with previous chapter test material. There were no real big surprises that I recall. 
Time taken on course: I spent a great deal of time on this course. I worked on this course regularly for approximately 6 weeks. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I had very little retained knowledge or familiarity with calculus. Taking this Calc I class was in the difficult to very difficult range for me. Here is what I wish someone would have told me prior to starting this class: If it’s been awhile since taking any trigonometry, precalculus, or algebra, then expect to be challenged. Get some working knowledge on at least the rules of exponents, natural log properties, basic logarithmic properties, the unit circle (it would be helpful to be able to wake up in the middle of the night and recite various values in radians etc.), -and by that I mean get ready to use a bunch of trigonometric identities (basic, inverse, some double-angle, sporadic half-angle, graphs of all identities with domains and ranges notated). If you are cold on these topics like I was, then let’s just be honest, -I’m not sure how much you can actually bone up on any of that garble; my advice might be better served for you to just do what I did and relearn (or learn) by fire. But for sure right away, start a neatly manicured page of notes with the above information, which you will then add the various derivatives and integrals of all the trig identities that you define as you go. Of note, my list above is by no means all-inclusive of what your 1 page of front and back notes will look like on final exam day!

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Here is one of the best things I can actually tell you: The gatekeeper for all things calculus is Professor Leonard on youtube. He is a life-saver, and I cannot understate how much he helped me pass this course. Mr. Burger in Thinkwell is great in a couple of his own ways, but Leonard is where you can actually figure out what’s up from down. When you get to integration by parts, learn from Leonard the “regular” way, but then check out blackpenredpen on youtube and save yourself some hassle (he teaches the DI method). Some of the subjects in Burger’s calc I are taught as calc II topics with Leonard (it is what it is) so just don’t be surprised.
I have three gripes about this Straighterline course. The first is that I felt like Burger’s lectures /videos were sometimes too high-level or they did not adequately encompass the variation(s) of the material that would follow in the practice quizzes and tests. The second gripe takes some explaining. After the practice quiz was submitted you are then shown steps to review how the problem was worked out; however, the way the problems were worked out largely lacked consistency regarding how much work was actually shown and sometimes how the problems were simplified etc. Many times, instead, important steps were not displayed, or the author of the worked out problems made assumptions about the student’s prior knowledge or exposure. This led to many questions that in my mind weren’t necessary had the author just showed a little more work. The third gripe is that they do not show any work for the answers on graded exams.   

1-10 Difficulty level: Calc I difficulty significantly depends on your familiarity /memory of trig., algebra, and precalculus, or your ability to learn on the fly. For me it was a solid 8. Good luck to those that follow.  

[mysonx3]

Provider: Straighterline
Course: Calc I
Course content: No textbook. Material is presented through Thinkwell calculus videos with Edward Burger and then practice problems via ungraded quizzes. The course consists of four-chapter tests, 1 midterm, and a final, which are all timed. You can retake the first exam as many times as you want up to the point of taking the final exam. The final exam is the only proctored test of the 6 graded tests in total.
Final exam format: The final exam is 40 questions, multiple choice (all tests are multiple choice) and proctored.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The difficulty of the final was pretty consistent with previous chapter test material. There were no real big surprises that I recall. 
Time taken on course: I spent a great deal of time on this course. I worked on this course regularly for approximately 6 weeks. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I had very little retained knowledge or familiarity with calculus. Taking this Calc I class was in the difficult to very difficult range for me. Here is what I wish someone would have told me prior to starting this class: If it’s been awhile since taking any trigonometry, precalculus, or algebra, then expect to be challenged. Get some working knowledge on at least the rules of exponents, natural log properties, basic logarithmic properties, the unit circle (it would be helpful to be able to wake up in the middle of the night and recite various values in radians etc.), -and by that I mean get ready to use a bunch of trigonometric identities (basic, inverse, some double-angle, sporadic half-angle, graphs of all identities with domains and ranges notated). If you are cold on these topics like I was, then let’s just be honest, -I’m not sure how much you can actually bone up on any of that garble; my advice might be better served for you to just do what I did and relearn (or learn) by fire. But for sure right away, start a neatly manicured page of notes with the above information, which you will then add the various derivatives and integrals of all the trig identities that you define as you go. Of note, my list above is by no means all-inclusive of what your 1 page of front and back notes will look like on final exam day!

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Here is one of the best things I can actually tell you: The gatekeeper for all things calculus is Professor Leonard on youtube. He is a life-saver, and I cannot understate how much he helped me pass this course. Mr. Burger in Thinkwell is great in a couple of his own ways, but Leonard is where you can actually figure out what’s up from down. When you get to integration by parts, learn from Leonard the “regular” way, but then check out blackpenredpen on youtube and save yourself some hassle (he teaches the DI method). Some of the subjects in Burger’s calc I are taught as calc II topics with Leonard (it is what it is) so just don’t be surprised.
I have three gripes about this Straighterline course. The first is that I felt like Burger’s lectures /videos were sometimes to high-level or they did not adequately encompass the variation(s) of the material that would follow in the practice quizzes and tests. The second gripe takes some explaining. After the practice quiz was submitted you are then shown steps to review how the problem was worked out; however, the way the problems were worked out largely lacked consistency regarding how much work was actually shown and sometimes how the problems were simplified etc. Many times, instead, important steps were not displayed, or the author of the worked out problems made assumptions about the student’s prior knowledge or exposure. This led to many questions that in my mind weren’t necessary had the author just showed a little more work. The third gripe is that they do not show any work for the answers on graded exams.   

1-10 Difficulty level: Calc I difficulty significantly depends on your familiarity /memory of trig., algebra, and precalculus, or your ability to learn on the fly. For me it was a solid 8.   

I'm in the middle of this course right now and my thoughts so far are very similar.

[armstrongsubero]

Provider: Straighterline
Course: Calc I
Course content: No textbook. Material is presented through Thinkwell calculus videos with Edward Burger and then practice problems via ungraded quizzes. The course consists of four-chapter tests, 1 midterm, and a final, which are all timed. You can retake the first exam as many times as you want up to the point of taking the final exam. The final exam is the only proctored test of the 6 graded tests in total.
Final exam format: The final exam is 40 questions, multiple choice (all tests are multiple choice) and proctored.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The difficulty of the final was pretty consistent with previous chapter test material. There were no real big surprises that I recall. 
Time taken on course: I spent a great deal of time on this course. I worked on this course regularly for approximately 6 weeks. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I had very little retained knowledge or familiarity with calculus. Taking this Calc I class was in the difficult to very difficult range for me. Here is what I wish someone would have told me prior to starting this class: If it’s been awhile since taking any trigonometry, precalculus, or algebra, then expect to be challenged. Get some working knowledge on at least the rules of exponents, natural log properties, basic logarithmic properties, the unit circle (it would be helpful to be able to wake up in the middle of the night and recite various values in radians etc.), -and by that I mean get ready to use a bunch of trigonometric identities (basic, inverse, some double-angle, sporadic half-angle, graphs of all identities with domains and ranges notated). If you are cold on these topics like I was, then let’s just be honest, -I’m not sure how much you can actually bone up on any of that garble; my advice might be better served for you to just do what I did and relearn (or learn) by fire. But for sure right away, start a neatly manicured page of notes with the above information, which you will then add the various derivatives and integrals of all the trig identities that you define as you go. Of note, my list above is by no means all-inclusive of what your 1 page of front and back notes will look like on final exam day!

Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Here is one of the best things I can actually tell you: The gatekeeper for all things calculus is Professor Leonard on youtube. He is a life-saver, and I cannot understate how much he helped me pass this course. Mr. Burger in Thinkwell is great in a couple of his own ways, but Leonard is where you can actually figure out what’s up from down. When you get to integration by parts, learn from Leonard the “regular” way, but then check out blackpenredpen on youtube and save yourself some hassle (he teaches the DI method). Some of the subjects in Burger’s calc I are taught as calc II topics with Leonard (it is what it is) so just don’t be surprised.
I have three gripes about this Straighterline course. The first is that I felt like Burger’s lectures /videos were sometimes to high-level or they did not adequately encompass the variation(s) of the material that would follow in the practice quizzes and tests. The second gripe takes some explaining. After the practice quiz was submitted you are then shown steps to review how the problem was worked out; however, the way the problems were worked out largely lacked consistency regarding how much work was actually shown and sometimes how the problems were simplified etc. Many times, instead, important steps were not displayed, or the author of the worked out problems made assumptions about the student’s prior knowledge or exposure. This led to many questions that in my mind weren’t necessary had the author just showed a little more work. The third gripe is that they do not show any work for the answers on graded exams.   

1-10 Difficulty level: Calc I difficulty significantly depends on your familiarity /memory of trig., algebra, and precalculus, or your ability to learn on the fly. For me it was a solid 8.   

I'm in the middle of this course right now and my thoughts so far are very similar.

I also agree

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 113: Business Communication
Course content: standard study.com quizzes, 3 written assignments that are not complicated
Final exam format: 100 multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The coursework prepares you for the final
Time taken on course: a few days
Familiarity with subject before course: I manage a small business, so pretty familiar
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: If you have worked in the business world for any length of time, you could do most of this in your sleep. You will have to memorize some business theory pioneers by name, but other than that it's things like "should you use emoji's in an email to your boss?". Pretty simple.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 313: Organizational Communication
Course content: standard study.com quizzes, 1 research paper
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The coursework prepares you for the final
Time taken on course: a few days
Familiarity with subject before course: I manage a small business, so pretty familiar
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: If you have done other communications courses from Study.com, I'm sure you can pretty much guess what this is about. A little theory, and alot of common sense stuff. The research paper is the hardest part
1-10 Difficulty level: 4

[Supermind]

Provider: Study.com
Course: BUS: 323 Organizational Theory (Transfers into a TESU as PSY-360)
Course content: Standard study.com quizzes, 1 research paper.
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The coursework prepares you for the final. Questions were a little tricky, and aimed at testing application of principles.
Time taken on course: about 5 days. 98 quizzes.
Familiarity with subject before course: None. It was quite interesting, and easy to follow.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: The research paper took time to complete. I wouldn’t say it was very difficult. Scored a 90 on the paper. Some of the lesson content is repetitive. In a few places, it is even confusing, because slightly different terminologies are being used to drive home the same concept.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4

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Provider: Study.com
Course: PSY 301: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Course content: 107 quizzes, 1 research paper
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The coursework prepares you for the final. This course requires a little bit of memorization of corporate terminologies, roles of HR, metrics used in HR etc.
Time taken on course: about 1 week.
Familiarity with subject before course: A bit, as I completed Org Theory prior to this one. Some of the concepts overlap. I would suggest completing I/O Psychology first and then moving on to Org Theory. Might make it easier.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This research paper took lesser time, as I could build off some of the concepts from my Org Theory paper. So, if you took these courses together, it makes things easier.
1-10 Difficulty level: 5 (Memorizing stuff made it slightly more complex).

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Provider: Study.com
Course: SOS 108: Ethics in the Social Sciences
Course content: 85 quizzes.
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Simple and straightforward for the most part. Some questions are hypothetical to test application of concepts.
Time taken on course: about 5 days.
Familiarity with subject before course: Some of the basic concepts like confidentiality, informed consent etc feature in all psychology courses.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Something that helped me learn faster was to correlate principles I was learning with some people, life situations I have encountered.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4

[camjenks]

Provider: Onlinedegree.com, online degree, OD
Course: Computer Science - Introduction to Programming (CS101)
Course content: Each lesson has a ~30 minute main video, then between 1 and 4 videos (usually youtube), as well as some reading. The readings are either out of a textbook used in the course or various website articles. The main videos are well made and informative. I got confused a few times, but they're mostly pretty easy to follow. The main textbook is very concise and helpful. The youtube videos and other articles vary widely. For some of them, I had to search for a previous article/video to figure out what was going on, but others were good and helped me figure out some missing pieces. 
There are 5-7 question quizzes at the end of each lesson. Most of them are answered word for word in the main lecture, but you really have to pay attention. You can't see what you got wrong after, it only shows a percentage. Some are prompts to enter code, and I tended to get questions wrong on quizzes with that so I suspect the formatting has to be very precise or it counts it wrong.
Final exam format: 50ish questions. Mostly multiple choice. There's some where you have to enter code, and those are much harder.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Very similar to the quizzes, but not the same questions. A lot of them were easy and were clearly covered in the material, so if you do ok on the course you'll be fine. There were a few questions that threw me for a loop but not many. I was scoring mostly 70-100 on the quizzes and got a 70 on the final, enough to come away with a B.
Time taken on course: 10 days, at least 5 hours a day. There are just some concepts that take time to wrap your head around, and you really have to write the code to put things together. It takes time. But it was an enjoyable course. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I write some basic scripts in Bash and Powershell, but nothing close to this level. The first 1/3 of the course contained a lot that I was familiar with already. I knew the concepts at least. The last 2/3 was all new to me and took me more time to get through. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Write code. Do the exercises. Make your own code and debug it. It's the only way. I did all the code in the main videos and a lot of the exercises in the supplementary material. I took thorough notes as I went along and referenced it when I forgot something mentioned in a later video. Then I binge watched all the main videos today before taking the test. Binge watching definitely got me a few extra questions. The algorithm lesson is out of order (it's 23 and should be 20), and that really had me confused for a while because I was missing key information. I think you can click the link in one of the main videos and watch algorithms lesson on the Kanopy website so you don't miss it like I did. Also, it's annoying that you can't move onto the next lesson until you've stayed on the current page for the length of the video. I was watching a lot at 2x speed, and then I'd have to wait. But for the vast majority of videos it didn't matter because I was pausing to try code anyway. Just something to be aware of. Plan ahead when you get stuck by opening the new pages and letting them sit. Also, there were a few type-Os here and there, but nothing too bad.
1-10 Difficulty level: 7. It's a good course, and I feel like I can actually put this to use and do what I learned (unlike some courses I've taken). But it's a difficult subject and will challenge a lot of people to think in new ways. I honestly had a headache several days in a row, and I was thinking about things and piecing topics together even when I wasn't studying. I think this is a great choice for a programming course if you're looking for one. The material prepares you for the exam and teaches you the subject.

[camjenks]

Provider: Saylor.org
Course: BUS303: Strategic Information Technology
Course content: Several outdated textbooks, a bunch of random articles and youtube videos (most 30 minutes to an hour). Mostly reading, and a lot of it.
Final exam format: 50 question multiple choice, proctored by ProctorU (Oh god that was a nightmare)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Not similar to the unit quizzes at all. Those quizzes are essay prompts with some sample ideas for you to review after, but frequently it's just a brief statement and then refers back to the massive amount of reading material. The practice final was pretty similar (60 questions instead of 50), and some of the questions appeared on both, so definitely study that practice final. 
Time taken on course: Studied for about a week and a half, failed the final. Took a break and came back and reviewed specifically what was on the test, barely past on the second attempt. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I was really familiar with almost everything presented in this course. The IT stuff was very familiar to me from my career (cloud, servers/clients, etc.). The Business aspects I had covered extensively in the TESU BSBA capstone, so it was a lot of review, but mostly it was learning the strange definitions for things that the textbooks gave (SWOT, 5 forces, PEST, etc.).
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know:  The final exam was mostly quizzing you on random sentences pulled from any of the sources, but you'd have to remember that exact sentence word for word to get it right because several answers that could be correct are also choices, but just not the sentence that the question was pulled from. Even though I felt it was vague, I did find several nearly word for word in the course material for some. However, other parts of the course contain material that supports other answer choices. Also, some were nearly word for word from the textbook but also marked the answer wrong even if you selected that. It's a tough test, so just count on some luck. Some have said that Saylor will adjust your score, that has not been my experience, but maybe I just didn't quite get close enough or something (missed by 3 questions last time). They emailed me back after 3 weeks and said they'd pass it on to someone else, but that was all I got. 
The course in general felt very disjointed, disorganized, and definitely outdated. They pull from so many sources, and many of those sources define things differently or present conflicting ideas. This makes the test harder. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I had planned it before there were so many study.com options, and I already had it planned as UL, so I went ahead. It's not worth it to learn because the course is not good, and it's not worth it for the credits because the test is not good. I know I'm being hard on Saylor. I respect what they're trying to do, and I've heard some of their other courses are better. That's great, but this course just isn't up to par.
1-10 Difficulty level: The course material is not difficult at all. There's just a lot of it. 5 for the material because it will take some time to get through and memorize all the different conflicting definitions for things related to business processes. Test I have to say 8 because it's hard to pass even if you prepared extensively. 


P.S. ProctorU was having some sort of outage. It took an hour to get the chat window to work (it would just pop up and say "Disconnected."). After that it was half an hour to get my Microphone working in the browser window. I just had a webinar at 3 today, so I know the microphone was good. They're always nice and I try to be friendly to the poor overworked proctors, but their system was not running smoothly today.