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

[bjcheung77]

What did the Communications course transfer as? I need a public speaking course for TESU

*Ding ding* Woo hoo! And if you take that course, that is what you will get!
It comes in and will work for Oral Communications requirement. Go get it!

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Philosophy 103: Ethics: Theory & Practice
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures.
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same
Time taken on course: a couple of weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: I have taken other philosophy courses before
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This is pretty simple if you've ever taken another ethics course. Basically this one focuses on ethics in the workplace and medical ethics by and large, although there is some theoretical stuff in there too. Nothing complicated really. The test is easier than the coursework imo
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 120: International Business
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures.
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same
Time taken on course: a couple of days
Familiarity with subject before course: I have managed an international shipping/receiving business for 20+ years
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was mostly review for me because it's what I deal with every day. If you know what tariffs, free trade agreements, etc are then you should be fine
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 100: Intro to Business
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures.
Final exam format: 100 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same but the final seems to focus more on management styles than the coursework does
Time taken on course: a couple of days
Familiarity with subject before course: I have managed an international shipping/receiving business for 20+ years
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was mostly review for me because it's what I deal with every day. However some of the finance stuff, like the theory of money and the macroeconomic stuff about how the Fed affects the money supply, was a little bit outside of my wheelhouse and I struggled with some of it. Note that this is a pretty long course for Study.com; it's 125 quizzes or something like that, and there's a little bit of everything in it. I think completing this course fills in parts of something like 8 other courses so the material is pretty wide ranging. Everything from micro and macro economics to business management to IT for business to finance to business communications. Makes sense for an intro course but just saying it covers alot of ground.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4

[bjcheung77]

Thanks for all your guide updates jsh1138, it's great reading through your informative details of these courses. Especially the ones about the TESU courses, I loved reading all of those ones.

[jsh1138]

You're very welcome. I'm glad someone is getting something out of them.

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Provider: Study.com
Course: Business 107: Organizational Behavior
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures.
Final exam format: 100 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's the same but tbh I thought the final was easier than the coursework
Time taken on course: a week maybe. part of it was filled in by other things I've done on Study.com
Familiarity with subject before course: I have managed an international shipping/receiving business for 20+ years
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Alot of this was review for me so I didn't have alot of trouble with it. Some of the "Mr So and So's 10 point plan for making waffles taste good" type stuff is annoying to memorize but it's not too bad. Like ALL of Study.com's business and communication courses, the answer to everything is more diversity. If your lumberjacks aren't cutting enough logs down in Alaska in any given day, the answer is to hire one in a wheelchair. If your all-Palestinian company needs an outside agency to come in and assess business processes, obviously it must be an Israeli one, etc. Always more diversity, more women, more minorities, more atheists, more disabled people, no matter what the context is. Apparently if you run your local Single Dads chapter you can only do better by hiring a load of women or trans-men, it's just a hard and fast rule that never has any exceptions. So you can do about 1/4 of the final by just always picking what you know is the dumbest solution in the real world. Other than that it's fine.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2

[jsh1138]

Provider: Study.com
Course: Communications 301: Diversity and Intercultural Communications
Course content: Standard Study.com quizzes and lectures with a written assignment thrown in
Final exam format: 70 multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: it's about the same but the final concentrates more on specific named scientists than the quizzes did
Time taken on course: a week maybe. part of it was filled in by other things I've done on Study.com
Familiarity with subject before course: I have taken other college communications courses
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: About what you'd expect. There is alot of assuming things on the part of the instructor, like *of course* the gender pay gap is real, or *of course* black people have it harder than white people, etc. There is alot of stereotyping for a course that is supposed to fight that kind of thing. Anyway it's easy enough to figure out what they want you to say usually, but some of the questions on the final were worded very strangely and I had to guess on about 5 of them just because I couldn't tell the difference between two of the answers on each of them. The written assignment is nothing special, don't worry about it.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3

[LongRoad]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Conflict Resolution
Course content: PDFs and videos are included with the cost of the course
Final exam format: The final exam, the score of which did NOT affect the grade, had 25 questions. Each multiple choice question had 4 possible answers. Ninety minutes were allowed for the exam.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Every question on each challenge or milestone was based upon the information provided in the PDFs. The working was a bit off sometimes.
Time taken on course: There were six units. Most had three challenges, and one Milestone. I took a couple/few hours to complete each unit. After a bit, I stopped watching the videos as they were short, the instructor repeated information from the previsions video, and the same information was covered in the PDFs.
Familiarity with subject before course: It seemed like a lot of common sense to me, but I did learn terminology and other interesting things. I think if I hadn't studied at all, I could have passed it, but I wanted a good grade.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I'll need to check with COSC, but, upon completion of the course, Sophia sends an email saying that official transcripts may be sent via Parchment at a cost of $5.25. I do not know if that is for all of the courses taken through Sophia, or for each course. An email from Sophia said that COSC accepts Parchment, but I have not checked with COSC as I'm not enrolled. (I think that's where I intend to go.) Of course, an ACE transcript can be sent, too.
1-10 Difficulty level: Level 4 as it's open book. Some of the wording of some questions was a bit quirky. That doesn't matter as much with the Challenges as you have two (2) chances for each question, but it's more problematical with the Milestones. I got a 96.

Provider:Sophia.org
Course: Project Management
Course content: There are three different instructors for each chapter, one of who, I think wrote the PDF. He's a bleached blond. His manner of lecturing was the least bothersome to me. There are PDFs for each of the four chapters.
Final exam format: The final exam, which required a 50% to pass, but which didn't influence the course grade (?) had 25 multiple-choice questions. Each question had four possible answers. It was open book.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams:No curve balls, the questions were occasionally worded in an oblique way.
Time taken on course: There were four units, and I did a unit each day.
Familiarity with subject before course: While not familiar, it was logical. I think I might have passed the final without studying, but that is not an option. You have to finish each unit's challenges (usually 3, each of 9 or so questions) before going on to that unit's Milestone. You can't jump ahead to another unit until the previous unit is done.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: When some concepts were not clear, I tried to look on the Internet for clarification. Maybe it's because this is a relatively new field for college courses (project mgmt.), but the way information was presented (terms, etc.) in the PDFs didn't seem to be readily found on the Internet. To clarify, if I were to do a search of the accounting equation, it would be assets=liabilities+assets on the Internet. If I searched for clarification, say, on people projects, I wouldn't find more information on people-focused projects in project management.
1-10 Difficulty level: Although I'm not normally logical, this subject matter seemed to follow common sense. It wasn't too difficult. I'd say a 4 or 5. Surprisingly, I only got a 90%. Shame on me. The Challenges offered 3 chances each time.

[EvilSandman]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Intro to Project Management
Course content: Text was all I used
Final exam format: Multiple Choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Same
Time taken on course: 2-3 Hours
Familiarity with subject before course: Low, but a basic knowledge.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: All the answers are in the text, it just requires looking in the right place.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3

[amaquiling]

Provider: Coopersmith
Course: Linear Algebra
Course content: Practice questions, suggested videos
Final exam format: Open-ended and multiple choice, but they were about equal in difficulty
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: I actually found the practice final harder than the exam itself!
Time taken on course: Took a bit of time (began taking studying seriously in March), but mostly because of shifting my focus between other courses and taking breaks between my intense study sessions
Familiarity with subject before course: Got an A in a community college level course 3 years ago. I would not have passed, as I had forgotten most of the information aside from how to perform row reduce operations
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Know your basic matrix operations, how to perform a dot product, how to perform the calculation for projecting a vector onto a plane of two basis vectors, how determinants work and you'll be set. I highly recommend watching 3blue1brown's videos on linear algebra for a strong foundation in the concepts, even if it doesn't go deep into detail about the topics. Made the whole learning process a lot easier. Then try to tackle to problems first and watch the videos for topics you don't understand.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4 (with sufficient preparation)