Took 6 Sophia Learning Courses in 2 months and passed them all, listing my thoughts

[tanc]

To clarify, I really did 5 of the courses within only a week, so it is relatively easy to do if you have the time. It was a serious grind, but all the credits transferred as I passed all the courses. The one that took me the longest was Fundamentals of English Composition, I started it in March but didn't get around to it until late April/May. Fundamentals of English Composition is a relatively easy elective to take, and I recommend it. It's a solid English review and only has 2 touchstones; an essay and the other is to write two paragraphs. Mind you, I had already completed all the normal English courses I needed in college (4 in total) so this class was basically a nice little review for me. Easy credit if you are good at writing papers, essay did not take long at all.

In terms of the classes that were easy I would say the Design course or Religion course are pretty easy. They only took me a few hours to do and the content is pretty simple to understand. The religion course requires a lot of reading in between the lines and the "find" function on Google Chrome is a saving grace. I would say the harder/hardest classes I took were Intro to Business and US History 2. I did not like the milestones much at all for those courses, they were not very clear and even reading the text didn't help me much. US History 2 I would say is the hardest, but due to the milestone questions. I felt like a lot of them were ridiculous, and example is like: "Below are statements that could have been said by this group, which one is unlikely", however, some of the statements could easily have been said by the group in question. Just not my type of questions I guess, but also the reading had so much content. Also, I felt like the US History 2 course did not look at things at an objective way, but rather in a political way. It was sort of weird, almost feels like it takes away credibility.

Tl;dr

List of hardest to easiest classes (for me)

1. US History 2
2. Intro to Business
3. Information Technology Course
4. Fundamentals in English Composition
5. Comparative Religion
6. Visual Communications

[lillingworth]

Omg, I'm also going through US History II and I'm finding the questions to be ridiculous. Ugh. I flew through Ethics and Sociology in just a few hours and I'm speeding along in Human Bio, Project Management and Intro to Business.

But that USH course.... ugh.

[ARhead]

So many people on this board have absolutely no sense or awareness, it's incredible.

[armstrongsubero]

I honestly don't blame COSC for doing what it did. After reading this I would say TESU and Excelsior are up next.

[LongRoad]

If folks are thinking that COSC changes its policies based upon forum postings, I would be afraid. For the college. It should be researching courses and their level of difficulty and determining whether to accept them or not. Our views should be irrelevant as none of us (?) are college administrators.

In the brave new world (nothing to do with COVID-19) we live in, colleges are getting more selective about what will transfer. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the purpose of SARAs. ( SARA – the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement – is an agreement between member states, territories and districts of the United States of America. States apply to their relevant regional education compact for membership in SARA, and they agree to deal with the distance education offerings of out-of-state SARA-participating institutions in accord with SARA’s national policies, rather than applying the state-specific policies they used prior to joining SARA – policies they still apply to out-of-state institutions that do not participate in SARA.) It seems to me that if a school is regionally accredited, that should mean its courses are good to go. I wanted to take a course from a state whose out-of-state tuition was less than my in-state tuition, and the school told me I couldn't as it didn't have a SARA with my state. And my (current) plan is to get my degree from COSC, not a state school. Grr.

[lillingworth]

If folks are thinking that COSC changes its policies based upon forum postings, I would be afraid. For the college. It should be researching courses and their level of difficulty and determining whether to accept them or not. Our views should be irrelevant as none of us (?) are college administrators.

In the brave new world (nothing to do with COVID-19) we live in, colleges are getting more selective about what will transfer. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the purpose of SARAs. ( SARA – the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement – is an agreement between member states, territories and districts of the United States of America.  States apply to their relevant regional education compact for membership in SARA, and they agree to deal with the distance education offerings of out-of-state SARA-participating institutions in accord with SARA’s national policies, rather than applying the state-specific policies they used prior to joining SARA – policies they still apply to out-of-state institutions that do not participate in SARA.) It seems to me that if a school is regionally accredited, that should mean its courses are good to go. I wanted to take a course from a state whose out-of-state tuition was less than my in-state tuition, and the school told me I couldn't as it didn't have a SARA with my state. And my (current) plan is to get my degree from COSC, not a state school. Grr.

Wow, that sounds frustrating. I've never even heard of that. Sorry you had to deal with it.


Also, evaluating based on difficulty... I think a lot of people here are seeing that some of us are going through the courses quickly and assuming they're very easy and don't meet the requirements for a university course. I may be going through courses quickly either because I'm writing pages and pages of notes and basically memorizing the text and am therefore able to find my answers quickly, or it's a subject I'm already familiar with and I don't really need to study. That doesn't make it a sub-par course. 

The goal of university courses isn't to be as difficult as possible. It's to teach you what you need to know for your career. But I really feel like people get caught up in how worthy a credit is based on how complicated the course was. 

If a programmer without a degree had to take an intro to programming class and finished everything in a day, does that mean the class is somehow lacking in structure or material? Nope. 

If a course teaches you what you need to know and also how to apply that knowledge, I'd say it's done it's job. I think some people here are becoming alt-credit elitists. 

Anyway, I'm veering off topic   haha 

I suspect money is that main motivation for the majority of changes we see.

[armstrongsubero]

@LongRoad This debate has been had on this forum over the years too many times to mention and I really don't feel like going into this with you. It's like trying to convince flat earthers the earth is round. All I will say is that the Big 3 and all the popular course providers are aware of the forum and there were even administrators present on the forum from the Big 3.

There were even official blog posts from the schools etc that referenced this forum. To thing this forum is "hidden" from the Big 3 is silly. We're not as insignificant as you think.

Posts similar to this one aren't new at all. We see them quite often. Then the posters deny that their posts had any impact. It's amazing. I have seen people here post "super super easy shouldn't even be a college course!" and "the answers are literally on the paper" and the classic "I did X courses in X days/months it was so easy!" and lets not forget "just keep some tabs open and the answers are literally on Google" only to see a few weeks later the Big 3 or course providers making some changes.

You have to remember these are accredited schools and they have a reputation and quality of standard to uphold.

I've been on this forum long enough both snooping then joining to see some of the things that were said on this forum DID influence what the Big 3 will take and what they won't.

I already have my degrees from the Big3, so I honestly don't give a Rabbits Foot what changes are made now. I would like to know however that everyone be given the same chance I did.

I'm nothing going into this again. All I have to say is just be mindful what is being posted here.

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@LongRoad and sorry I could't resist but don't you think a forum like this where people post all day long how hard and easy some courses are is research? this is raw unbiased feedback and if you think no one pays attention to this blog, stick around a little, you'll see.

@lillingworth not in the mood, you should know this by now.

[ctcarl]

Tanc, welcome to the forum, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

This thread has been a really interesting read!  I've completed all of Sophia's courses, except for English Comp II.  Because they were free, I took a couple I never would have voluntarily taken, like Stats and Algebra.  What surprised me most is that those weren't the hardest for me.  By far, in my case that was Ethics.  The only reason I can remember anything at all about "Kantian Deontology" was Monty Python's Philosopher's Song.  The whole concept of studying a branch of ethics where the only thing that matters is yourself is puzzling to me.  I managed to get through it, but I'll never go near another Ethics course.

In terms of "easiest", well, Essentials of Conflict Management and Building Effective Teams were a breeze, but they ought to be, they're one credit courses.

With the exception of Ethics, I can't really say that one course was significantly "harder" than another.  I really enjoyed all the history courses (Art I & II, US I & II).  I had read negative comments from other posters about one or the other, but, I can't say there was much difference in difficulty.  Follow the material, take the quizzes, pass the test.

I thought I would hate Accounting and Stats because I dislike Math.  They were both a slog for me, for that reason, but on the plus side, I learned some skills I never would have acquired otherwise.  And they really weren't that bad!  The formulae were all well explained and presented in a logical format.

Sociology, Psychology, Visual Communications, Ancient Greek Philosophers, Intro to Business, Project Management, Environmental Science, and Studying Religions were all good experiences, not too dry and an excellent base to start building on.

I did dislike Public Speaking and the English Comp courses, for a couple of reasons.  First, I loathe academic writing, and you do have to "write" a speech for Public Speaking, even if you are submitting it via a video clip.  Second, now that Sophia is getting hammered because of their free promo, it takes forever to get Touchstones graded.  The feeling I got from completing an exam, adding the course to ACE, and seeing it in my ACE credit list, all in a manner of hours, was amazing.  But waiting four or five weeks to get a Touchstone graded...I don't think I've ever clicked "refresh" on one web page that many times in my life.  Really took the wind out of my sails.

But to be fair, that's largely because of the free promo, so I don't think I can fault Sophia for that.  Prior to the pandemic, it took more like a week or ten days to get a graded Touchstone back, and that's pretty reasonable.

Overall, I liked Sophia's content even when I was paying for it, but for free, it's hard to beat.

[ARhead]

I actually also had a really hard time with that ethics course, to the point I just stopped doing it.

[rachel83az]

Some people find playing a musical instrument to be easy. That doesn't mean that it's not a challenge for everyone else. Some people think that painting a picture is easy. Others do not. I happen to like math. Others find it difficult and challenging. We don't hear from the people who think that these courses are an absolute challenge. It's selection bias.