Aaaaand…..the Books!

 

In anticipation of my forth-coming class review I also wanted to announce that I’ll be reviewing each of the class textbooks I use as well.  Here are some of the ones I have. 🙂  I decided to do it this way because sometimes the class itself is great but the book completely sucks and I feel like I should get a completely different post to wax eloquently about the book’s suckiness (or its non-suckiness, cuz there are some good ones here!).  Hopefully this works out and hopefully I have my first review up by the end of the week!

Annoying Straighterline Bug Fixed

I started taking Straighterline classes in June and finished my first in September.  Why do I tell you this?  So you can understand how excited I am that they got this glitch fixed!  It actually wasn’t a big deal but I like everything to be perfect so it kind of annoyed me.

In MyLine account it will show all the classes you’ve taken.  But if you completed one it would still show as “In Progress”.  You could go into the class and see that it’d say “Complete” but it would not show as complete in MyLine.  This did not affect your transcripts, they would be sent out with your final percentage grade, however it was annoying.

I chatted with a Straighterline Advisor a couple weeks ago and he basically said it was a glitch they were working on.  I admit, I thought it was kind of a patsy answer (they’d probably been “working” on it since September at least) but it wasn’t because….. *drum-roll*

I logged into MyLine today and my percentage grades are showing up for the ones I’ve completed.  Yay!!!!!!!!  Glad that got fixed!!!!

Welcome, Hello, Purpose of This Blog (Yeah, All That)

Hiya and welcome to this blog!

For all those interested I am a college student attempting to earn my degree non-traditionally.  There are many options for doing this, if you’re really interested in checking out the whole field I recommend starting at degreeforum.net.  The folks there have collected a wealth of information on this area and it’s seriously fun to scroll through and just read. 😉

Back to this though.  One of the “non-traditional” ways of earning college credit is a company known as Straighterline.  They are not an accredited institution but they have college courses recommended for credit by the American Council on Education.  ACE has basically said that Straighterline may not be accredited but their courses are just as good as an accredited institution’s courses.  This is good news for students because most of Straighterline’s courses cost about $50 to enroll in plus a monthly subscription fee of $99 (how long you’re enrolled and pay that fee is entirely up to you).  They’re kind of like a cheap online community college (without the accreditation).

To seal the deal, in addition to ACE credit recommendation, Straighterline has partnered with 30 or so accredited colleges.  So if you take a Straighterline course and earn a grade of 70% or more it will transfer to one of those colleges (I believe Straighterline guarantees this or your money back).

What does this have to do with my blog?  Well, I am a Straighterline (SL) student.  I’ve taken four courses with them so far, am currently enrolled in four, and will take at least one more.  I thought it might be helpful to future and current students to have a fellow student’s reviews up.

Also, despite SL’s assurances I still worry about the ability of my courses to transfer (and I’m assuming others do to).  I’ll be chronicling my transfer journey for other students.  I’m currently working towards an AA degree and plan to go onto a Bachelor’s.  For my AA I’m looking at two Straighterline partner colleges, for my Bachelor’s I’m considering a partner and a couple of non-partners (a couple of whom aren’t listed as part of ACE’s college network).

How do various Straighterline courses transfer to (insert name of college)?  Which ones will transfer to non-partners?  Will partners give an SL student problems with transferring?  Is it possible to get a non-partner and non-ACE accepting college to accept them?  To be honest, I don’t have the answers to most of those questions.  So join me on my journey and maybe together we can figure it out.