Being a member of the Homeschool Crew, most of my reviews are gears for my students. However, occasionally I am given the opportunity to review products that are a better fit for another member of my family. Usually that is my teenage daughter and sometimes it is myself. However, this time, my husband has been stepping in to review a 3 month subscription to the CLEP and DSST prep materials offered by Study.com.
For this particular review, I am going to hand the reins over to my husband. For a very quick introduction - my husband, Charles, is a 33 year old TSgt in the United States Air Force who is currently pursuing his college degree (as the mission and time allows). So without further adieu, I'll turn it over to him.
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| Charles sitting with a cup of coffee and Study.com |
Charlie's Review
As part of my progression in my career with the US Air Force, I have the opportunity to achieve my college degree through the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF). While the CCAF does allow for me to attend actual classes for the completion of my Associates degree, I am also able to take the CLEP tests for classes to achieve college credits. As my time is often limited, the option of taking a CLEP test is very appealing to me.
Recently, I have been using Study.com to start preparing for a Humanities CLEP test.
Study.com is an online website offering online courses and study tools over a large variety of different subjects. Geared to help grade school students from K-12 as well as college students, the goal of Study.com is to help students perform well both in an academic settings as well as provide tools necessary for professions gain skills needed in their career field. Many of the course offered by Study.com are recommended for college credit by the American Council on Education (ACE) and the National College Recommendation Service (NCCRS).
The Humanities CLEP course is 29 chapters long, with each chapter consisting of a number of individual lessons.
Each lesson is a video that is taught/narrated by a qualified instructor knowledgeable in the topic at hand.
-The chapter/lesson modules are easy to navigate, and can be completed in any order. They also keep track of your progression, showing the percentage complete of each chapter, as well as quiz/test completion and scores.
-Below each video is the entire lesson transcript. Entire lessons as well as tests/quizzes can be printed.
After each lesson is a short, 5 question quiz. The end of each chapter presents a 30+ question test.
-You can also take notes while watching the video, and the notes are timed stamped with their corresponding spot in the video for easy referencing.
-The dashboard shows recent activity, lists your set goals, any notes you've taken. I was able to easily pop back into the course where I left off by visiting the dash.
- You are able to set a time based goal for any course you are working on. By selecting a projected finish date, Study.com will tell you how much you need to progress each week to stay on course. You can also elect to have email reminders or SMS messages sent to you to help keep you on track.
-The course is entirely self paced. You can plow through it as quick as you like or take it slow and steady. I found this to be useful since my daily schedule and the demands on my time due to my job with the military can vary greatly from day to day. There were days that I was able to log in while at work and complete a lesson or two during down time and there were other times I was not able to log in as I was on the flight line most of the night.
-The instructor for most of this course was Elspeth Green, who holds a B.A. with Honors in English from Stanford University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in English Literature at Princeton University. I found her to be an excellent guide in navigating through early European literature.- I found the lessons to be engaging and interesting. I found the information to be well presented and easy to understand. I was able to pass most quizzes/tests with 80% or higher on the first try. Most of what i learned pertained to Medieval literature and the English Renaissance, as well as general literary terms and concepts.
- I discovered through this course that I would have been most likely unsuccessful at passing a humanities CLEP without studying. This discovered ultimately saved me from an wasting my time trying to take the test unprepared as well as wasting the money it would have cost me to retake the test after initially failing it. On the same token, I feel confident that completing this course will arm me with the knowledge necessary to pass the humanities CLEP. I was able to learn a significant amount of information in a relatively short period of time through these lessons.
-I will probably take longer than the 3 months that we were given for this review in order to complete this class, mainly because I am being placed on Temporary orders away from my duty station for several weeks and am unsure how much spare time I will have while there. However, I have found this class to be of such value that I have no issues with spending the monthly price ($39.99/mth for the basic plan) in order to extend my study time so that I can complete this class once I return in the hopes to take the Humanities CLEP exam in September.
For more information about Study.com, be sure to visit their website. You can also find them on the following social media sites:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StudyDotCom/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Studydotcom
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