Provider: ASU EA
Course: Chemistry for Engineers
Course content: Course presented through videos and printable handouts. I did not read the handouts separately from the lectures the first few weeks, but in later weeks read them first and that helped a lot.
Final exam format: Multiple choice. 40-60 questions (I don't remember exactly)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Covered entire course. No curve balls, but that doesn't mean I got everything right.
Time taken on course: Many hours each week. They recommended something like 18-23 hours a week and I was probably hitting that if you include watching the lectures.
Familiarity with subject before course: I took high school chemistry and college physics, but it's been a while
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course was rough. It was done in 8 weeks; I think 16 weeks would have been better and allowed more time for processing the huge amount of info covered. The TA was responsive to questions, though. There was more atomic/subatomic physics than I would have expected, and a lot of it was stacked right at the front. Some weeks were easier than others. I struggled more in the weeks when Prof. Jones was the only lecturer--the way she presented information was not easy for me to digest. Later in the course I would focus on reading the handouts and then play her lectures on 2x after I had processed the concepts. That worked better. I probably only managed to complete the course because I really, really wanted to have a better understanding of chemistry and get a chemistry course on my transcript.
1-10 Difficulty level: 8
Final grade: A (I got a B or C on the final, but lab and weekly homework grades pulled the overall score up)
Course: Chemistry for Engineers
Course content: Course presented through videos and printable handouts. I did not read the handouts separately from the lectures the first few weeks, but in later weeks read them first and that helped a lot.
Final exam format: Multiple choice. 40-60 questions (I don't remember exactly)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: Covered entire course. No curve balls, but that doesn't mean I got everything right.
Time taken on course: Many hours each week. They recommended something like 18-23 hours a week and I was probably hitting that if you include watching the lectures.
Familiarity with subject before course: I took high school chemistry and college physics, but it's been a while
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: This course was rough. It was done in 8 weeks; I think 16 weeks would have been better and allowed more time for processing the huge amount of info covered. The TA was responsive to questions, though. There was more atomic/subatomic physics than I would have expected, and a lot of it was stacked right at the front. Some weeks were easier than others. I struggled more in the weeks when Prof. Jones was the only lecturer--the way she presented information was not easy for me to digest. Later in the course I would focus on reading the handouts and then play her lectures on 2x after I had processed the concepts. That worked better. I probably only managed to complete the course because I really, really wanted to have a better understanding of chemistry and get a chemistry course on my transcript.
1-10 Difficulty level: 8
Final grade: A (I got a B or C on the final, but lab and weekly homework grades pulled the overall score up)
(12-02-2020, 05:06 PM)rachel83az Wrote: Provider: ASU Earned AdmissionsGreat evaluation! I just want to add that I loved their Q&A sessions on Zoom. They were done by one of the professors who designed the course, and there were three or four over the course. He was extremely helpful; watching participating in those helped me a lot with the midterm, final, and homework problems I'd gotten stuck on.
Course: CSE 110 - Programming for Everyone: Introduction to Programming
Course content: There are some videos at the beginning but it's mostly text + programming labs at ZyBooks.
Final exam format: 59 questions (proctored) + a final ZyBooks lab (unproctored)
Final exam content vs course content/practice exams: The proctored exam had a few minor curveballs due to my misreading the code samples but none of it was entirely unexpected.
Time taken on course: 15 weeks
Familiarity with subject before course: Some previous familiarity with Python (first half of the course & midterm), no familiarity with Java (second half & final).
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: A lot of the content was for 2 weeks at a time. I think this was to allow people to be able to take their time to grasp the concepts but it just made things more difficult for me. I would go through the content for a given week in 1 or 2 days and then have nothing to do for 12 or 13 days. Because of this, I'd forget things that were learned the previous week and have to review them before continuing onward. The two lowest grades for the programming labs are dropped from your final grade, which is great because I got frustrated with the last lab (arrays in Java) because I'd forgotten how the previous week (classes & objects) worked and just didn't bother to finish it. Splitting up the programming labs and/or having more programming labs would've helped alleviate the problem of forgetting. That said, while it is required that you take the proctored final in order to receive a grade, this is a course where it is possible to pass (with a C) before you even take that test. After finishing the unproctored portion of the final, I had a 73% in the class.
1-10 Difficulty level: 6
Final grade: A