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

[rpmranger]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Introduction to Information Technology
Course content: Tutorials, no book
Final exam format: 25 Questions open book, pass/fail. Not included in grade %. No proctor required. 

Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Matched the course very well. No tricks, all the information is in the tutorials.

Time taken on course: I took 2 days. I went through all the challenges for each section quickly then spent more time on the milestone exams and double-checked answers. Probably about 7 hours in total over 2 days. There is 4 sections to get through with small challenges, 4 milestone exams, and a final that is not part of the grade just Pass/Fail. All open book. The 4 milestones are the main source of points for the grading. 

Familiarity with subject before course: I am no computer expert. Just an average computer user for basic tasks like internet and word processing, setting up home internet etc. I use MAC not Windows so some of that information was not intuitive for me and I had to look it up. Other things are pretty easy and I could scan through quickly. The sections about IT and networking took me more time because I am completely unfamiliar, but it's not hard at all to grasp.
 
1-10 Difficulty level:  1, not hard at all. Read the information, answer the questions. 24/25 Final exam score with only light reading and no IT experience. Overall, very straightforward questions. No tricks or poorly worded questions. Wish all courses were like this.

[rpmranger]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Introduction to Ethics
Course content: Video/Tutorials.. no book. 
Final exam format: Multiple choice.  
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: This was the most frustrating part. The questions asked along with answer choices given were ridiculously written and did not match up with the content clearly. At all. 
Time taken on course: Several hours per day. Watched the videos, read the tutorials. You can get through it fairly quickly in a week or so. 
Familiarity with subject before course: Ethics isn't a hard concept.. but this class turns a simple concept into a convoluted philosophical mess of information. Some people probably like that sort of thing but I sure don't. 
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: 
1-10 Difficulty level: 6-7. Not because ethics is a hard concept but because of the poorly worded questions/answers for this course related to the actual material provided. You could not clearly match up the reading to many of the test/milestone questions. I could read the information directly from the pdf yet still had to guess on many questions because the answer possibilities provided were not definitive. It's extremely frustrating to look up the text only to find two possible correct answer choices and just have to guess anyway. A large amount of questions were subjective and based on the authors interpretation, not the provided material. Absolutely the WORST tests I have ever seen in any course. I hated this class just out of pure frustration with the content provided/tests given but I DID still pass the course (barely). I used the free Sophia promotion but would not recommend paying for this course unless you happen to love philosophy or have no other alternative to check this gen-ed box. This is the lowest course score I've gotten in over 100 University credits taken. Rarely do I go below 92-94% in any course. This course was a 74% for me.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Introduction to Ethics
Course content: I only read the text, but there are videos available.
Final exam format: Multiple choice  
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: You really need to take at least Greek Philosophers before taking this course. Otherwise, the questions don't align all that well with the content.
Time taken on course: I didn't keep track, but I multiple hours per day on it.
Familiarity with subject before course: I had already taken Greek Philosophers and Intro to Psychology and the questions in the Ethics course covered a lot of what had already been covered in Philosophers. Not so much Psychology, but I do believe that it was nevertheless helpful. Units 2 and 3 were the worst and most confusing.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3 or 4, but only because I'd already taken Greek Philosophers and Intro to Psychology. There was a lot of overlap. If I hadn't taken those first, it'd have been at least a 6 or a 7.

---

Provider: Sophia
Course: Ancient Greek Philosophers
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice  
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: They align fairly well. There were only a few confusing questions in the milestone/exam
Time taken on course: Less than a day; it's only 1 unit.
Familiarity with subject before course: ASU Western Civilization had briefly touched on Greek philosophers just before I took this course, so I had some vague familiarity. However, this course went into significantly more depth. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 2 or 3; there are some confusing segments, but it's not too bad. As long as you thoroughly read the text, you should be able to get a passing grade.

IMO, this is a definite prerequisite to understanding Sophia's Intro to Ethics course.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Foundations of English Composition
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice + short essay
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The texts were aligned fairly well with the exam
Time taken on course: 1 day
Familiarity with subject before course: Had already taken Sophia's English Composition I and this was more of the same
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There are two touchstones - the first is simply writing 2 paragraphs, the second is writing a 1000-1500 word essay. The challenges and milestones are pretty easy if you're familiar with basic high school English classes. If your school accepts this, it's a good source of credits.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2 or 3; the essay is the most difficult part.

[LongRoad]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Introduction to Statistics.
Course content: The course is presented by (at least) 3 different instructors who appear on videos. There are PDFs of the videos. Jonathan, my favorite instructor (and I think he did the PDF) would ask viewers to pause to do exercises every now and then. It made it a bit more interactive.
Final exam format: As with all of the Sophia courses I've reviewed to date, there are challenges and milestones for each unit. There were five units. After the fifth milestone, there's a final. You have to pass it, but it doesn't affect your grade.
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: For the challenges, milestones, and final, all of the problems reflect what has been taught in the course. No curve balls.?
Time taken on course: Since the beginning of time. Kidding, but I didn't keep track of the time. It was a LOT of time, however. I have tried to learn statistics many times, so, while I've been exposed to it before, none of it stuck. I would have flunked the final, but for the course and the PDFs.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Unlike many stat courses, you're provided the formula for each question that needs it.
1-10 Difficulty level: For me, this was a 10. It is me an not the method it's taught. It is very well taught, but the concepts just don't want to take up lodging in my brain. That said, I think I got a 92%. And lost 5 pounds of sweat during the 5th unit Milestone and the final. While I haven't taken courses through other providers (Straighterline, etc.), I would pay for this course if I had to take Stats. I'm not sure I could have done it any other way.

---

Provider: Sophia
Course: Intro to Sociology
Course content: Videos and PDFs
Final exam format: Multiple choice questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: It all lined up
Time taken on course: 2 days
Familiarity with subject before course:My first sociology course, but it's a topic I have found very interesting.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: No surprises. It's pretty straight forward. It was occasionally tricky for me in that they'd give you a scenario, and you had to apply concepts. I don't think that some of the scenarios were clear, but that could just be me.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2 . I found it an interesting course, so that could be why I found it easier.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Approaches to studying religion
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Text and questions aligned fairly well
Time taken on course: About a day
Familiarity with subject before course: Not a religious expert, but had some familiarity with religion before this.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Most adult learners can probably pass this without reading the provided texts.l You might not get the highest score, but you'd pass. A lot of it is stuff that "everyone knows" like Islam being based in Mecca. I was less familiar with Hinduism and other Eastern religious practices but that was a small part of the course.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2-3 for an adult learner, 3-4 for a young college freshman.

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Art History I
Course content: Text with lots of pictures
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Aligned to the text very well.
Time taken on course: About 20 hours, spread out over the course of multiple days
Familiarity with subject before course: Some familiarity with art, but not nearly enough to pass this blind
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I don't have a visual memory so there's no way I'd have been able to pass a traditional art history class with having to memorize different pieces of art. This was hard enough, even though the milestones/exams were open book. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 6-7

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Art History II
Course content: Text with lots of pictures
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Aligned to the text very well.
Time taken on course: About 30-35 hours, spread out over the course of multiple days
Familiarity with subject before course: Art History I had no bearing on being able to pass this or not.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This was even more difficult than Art History I. There are more surviving artworks from a hundred years ago than there are from a few thousand years ago, so that makes sense. Major focus on modern art and art installations. I realized before this course that art often has nudes but I did not expect the sometimes semi-graphic explanations of a few modern art performances. Modern art is strange.
1-10 Difficulty level: 8 or 9

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: College Algebra
Course content: Text; there are also videos but I didn't use them
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Well aligned to the text
Time taken on course: About 2 weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: Had done HS algebra, but it'd been a while
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: There were typos and skipped steps littered throughout the course. It also does not cover at least some of the things you ought to know in order to continue on to higher math. It's a good course to check the required "college algebra" box  for school but not really great for continuing on to calculus.
1-10 Difficulty level: 4-7 (depends on if you hate math or love it)

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Visual Communication
Course content: Text with lots of pictures
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Well aligned to the text
Time taken on course: A few days
Familiarity with subject before course: I had some experience with the type of graphic design covered in this course.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I was expecting to have difficulty with this because I'm not great when it comes to graphical design. Thankfully, this course only covered very basic aspects of typography and graphic design.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4

[ab10365]

Provider: Sophia
Course: Introduction to Statistics
Course content: Video tutorials/Sophia Tutorials. There are 5 units, 5 unit milestones, and 1 final milestone.
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: In my opinion the course content aligned pretty well with the final exam. 
Time taken on course: HOURS. I can't even tell you how many days it took (maybe a week or so?), but I was working on this course for around 8 hours a day. 
Familiarity with subject before course: None really. The last college math course I took before this was College Algebra 7 years ago.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I recommend looking over the practice milestone answer keys when studying for the final exam. They contain explanations for each answer and the final consists of similar questions. You'll want either a TI-83 calculator (TI-84 is fine too) or Microsoft Excel for this course. I used the calculator as it was just easier for me, but Excel is cheaper. Use what you have.
1-10 Difficulty level: 10 for sure. I've always loved math, but this course was painful to work through. I'm not sure if this is specific to this Sophia course or if statistics is just an awful subject in general. I literally gave myself headaches working through the content. There are soooo many concepts to learn and sooo much reading. I managed to pass the course with a 97% but that's only because I literally had to review topics over and over again due to things being so confusing. This is by far the most difficult course I've taken on Sophia.

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Foundations of College Algebra
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Well-aligned to the text
Time taken on course: 1 day
Familiarity with subject before course: Had already taken Sophia's college algebra, wanted to see what this was like
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: No typos (thankfully). This is almost exactly Sophia's College Algebra course but without X. For instance, instead of y=3x + 2, they might ask you to figure out what 3 * 8 + 2 is. It's also substantially shorter, with some algebra sections cut out. If you don't desperately need a math refresher, skip this 0-credit course and just take Sophia's algebra. 
1-10 Difficulty level: 1-3 (depends on if you hate math or love it)

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Foundations of Statistics
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Fairly well aligned to the text
Time taken on course: A few days
Familiarity with subject before course: Hadn't done statistics before
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: I have not taken Sophia's statistics course yet, but this feels like it is the same course but also that they cut out bits that would be important for my understanding. I passed but I don't really feel like I learned much.
1-10 Difficulty level: 6-7

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Foundations of English Composition
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice/essay
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Well-aligned to the text
Time taken on course: 1 day
Familiarity with subject before course: Had already done Sophia's English Comp I.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: If you took junior high/high school English, you'll be able to pass this course without reading any of the text. There are two touchstones: the first one is 2 paragraphs, the second one is a 1000-1500 word essay. The essay was the hardest part, though not difficult.
1-10 Difficulty level: 1-2

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: College Readiness
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Well-aligned to the text
Time taken on course: A couple of days
Familiarity with subject before course: Pretty familiar with the concept
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course mostly covers things like don't plagiarize, don't cheat, schedule your time well, stay healthy. I think there was a small section on how to properly cite sources (rather than just telling you that you need to cite sources) but don't expect to learn MLA/APA from this. Even teens should be able to pass this without difficulty.
1-10 Difficulty level: 1-2

---

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Conflict Resolution
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Fairly well aligned, there are some confusing questions though
Time taken on course: 1 week
Familiarity with subject before course: Had already taken Sophia's Essentials of Managing Conflict. That one covers the first unit or so of this one.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course has the old-style format where you get two tries to answer the same question correctly. Thankfully, in my opinion, most of the answers are obvious if you read the scenarios (don't have to read the whole tutorial).
1-10 Difficulty level: 3-4 - there are a number of unfamiliar terms that can cause confusion

[rachel83az]

Provider: Sophia.org
Course: Introduction to Sociology
Course content: Text
Final exam format: Multiple choice
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: A couple of tricky questions, but mostly well aligned
Time taken on course: Several days
Familiarity with subject before course: Other Sophia courses had already covered a lot of what was in this course
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: If you've been following current events, you probably know enough to get a halfway decent grade in this course already due to all the talking points about things like social inequality. I only really needed to read the text where it revolved around specific sociologists and what their theories were or were not.
1-10 Difficulty level: 2-3

[studyandpass5]

Provider: Study.com
MCourse: Management Information Systems
Course content: Videos and transcripts, quizzes, 3 papers and a proctored final exam
Final exam format: Mine had 70 questions
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The questions on the final exam were very similar to what was on the chapter quizzes and practice final. Using those as practice really helped. 
Familiarity with subject before course: I generally know about MIS
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: Like I said, I generally know about MIS so reading the material is not difficult. The first paper I found to be almost undoable, at least for me, as I could not find the information anywhere. So, I skipped it and just did the other two papers, which were much easier. Between the quiz score, papers, and final, I didn't even need to do the first paper.  
1-10 Difficulty level: 2-3