English I at Straighterline (review)

[Epiphany]

(All the spelling and punctuation mistakes in this review are intentional. Really…)

To start out on the positive: I like Straighterline. I think they offer a good service at a good price. I really enjoyed the Accounting II course. I didn’t much enjoy the English I course.

The course consisted of several short papers and some quizzes. The review material was good, and not too boring at all. I like their powerpoint style presentations. They also have review activities, which amount to crossword like games. Those were a complete waste of time, and you don;t need to complete them to take the quizzes.

Quizzes:
The quizzes are very straightforward, and if you go through the material they provide for you, you should get close to a 100% on all of them.

Papers:
The papers, I didn’t like. It’s not that I don’t like writing. The paper review/grading cycle works like this.

1. Submit a draft for review and comment by a tutor
   
2. Make changes based on the tutors suggestions
   
3. submit the final draft for grading
   

I was very frustrated by that cycle. It seems disjointed, and the tutors/instructors/people doing all the grading are not on the same page at all. I was constantly getting feedback on my draft recommending a change, I made the change, lost points on that change in the final. Sometimes it was pretty blatant. The issue is its usually two different people that read and advise you on the draft, and that grade the final. Here is an example. I wrote a compare and contrast essay, the essay was organized subject by subject, not similarities vs differences. I submitted the draft to be reviewed and commented on. The comment was “this essay should be reorganized into similarities vs differences, not subject by subject”. So as a diligent student would, I re-wrote the entire essay to be similarities vs differences, carefully checked it over, and submitted it for grading. It came back with a 1 out 3 on organization; the comment was “this essay should have been organized subject by subject, not similarities vs differences”. I had done it that way to start with, and lost points doing what the tutor had suggested. It was after this essay that I stopped listening to the tutors. I submitted drafts, asked them to look for punctuation etc, fixed those, and submitted it. No matter what anyone said about the thesis or the organization, I just sent it right back in again. My grades on the essays started to improve right away.

Overall Impressions:
What’s the moral of that story? Well. Your mileage may vary. But if I did it all over again, I wouldn’t spend so much time fretting over revising the draft it was pointless for me.

Would I take another English course from Straighterline, or would I do it again knowing what I know now? Maybe. It’s still good bang for the buck. Again, I preferred their Accounting II course to the English I.

How did I do:
According to my handy excel spreadsheet... looks like I've earned a B. Which is all I expected after I did the first paper, and it's all I need. So overall I'm satisfied with the mark. I suppose could make a stink about all the problems with the paper review, but it's not really worth the time or effort. I have more courses to finish on my way to an EC degree.