Senior year is crazy busy and making sure that your students are ready for college or the work force is high priority for any homeschool family. At this point in the game, we are dotting the Is and crossing the Ts in an effort to confirm that the transcript is correct and in order. We received a 3-month subscription to Study.com in order to see for ourselves how their CLEP and DSST materials might benefit us. We are fond of resources that my daughter can use independently and Study.com fits that perfectly. The neat thing about these classes is that they can be used as full study courses or they can be used as short refresher courses -- and best of all, they can be used to earn college credit. This is a huge benefit to us right now because my daughter is considering taking a semester off of formal school work and postponing her college entrance until January. I like knowing that there is an option that would keep her involved in study on her own terms while she contemplates what her future will look like. In addition, there are almost 140 online courses to help students fall in love with learning.
When you first log into Study.com the screen opens to your dashboard. The dashboard allows you to choose the coursework you are interested in, shows you the courses you are currently enrolled in, offers a log of recent activity (so that you can easily find your place any time you log in), and lists your goals for the week. After choosing courses, they are immediately available on the dashboard so that you can begin study. If you aren’t sure where to start, you can browse their libraries of classes and resources. My daughter's life goal is to become a deaf education interpreter and she has spent the last two years training under a deaf educator so that she is fluent in ASL. The ASL Flashcards offered great practice for quick recall, but she was especially excited to find all of the Deaf Education resources available to her. Teaching Strategies for Deaf Education, The Deaf Community: History & Culture, and The History of American Sign Language were most intriguing because they helped her to even better understand her calling. Course notes, organized by lesson, are conveniently stored in one place and there are both video-based lessons and text-based lessons.
There are over 30 CLEP courses and they offer more than just test prep. The website first explains how the CLEP process works and provides thorough lessons with flash cards to study. Not only is this beneficial for my daughter, but my college sophomore son can utilize these courses, as well. He plans to take chemistry next fall and the chemistry lessons here can be used as summer preparation before the course or they can even assist him in testing out of class altogether. It is really up to him. CLEP courses offer 15-20 hours of actual lessons and there are additional flashcards and practice tests available. If my son chooses to make the effort, he can spend a few hours a week studying and complete the entire exam material by the end of the summer.
There is a placement test available to help him determine what he already knows. This way he can study just what he needs to freshen up on from his high school chemistry class. If he misses a question on the placement test, the correct answer is revealed before he moves forward to the next question. This is a constructive win/win.
For purposes of review, my daughter chose to study the DSST Course titled Introduction to Communication 101: Public Speaking. To begin study, she simply logged in and clicked on the course. She was able to set her goals about the pace that she would complete the course and had the option to set up text or email reminders. She knew immediately how many lessons made up the course and how long each one should take her to finish. It helps her to see the end goal at the beginning as it provides motivation to keep going.
Public Speaking consists of 17 Chapters. The chapters are divided into 119 lessons. Each lesson contains a short video (roughly 3 - 7 minutes each) and has a 5 question quiz to test comprehension. This quiz can be taken immediately after viewing the video or you can print it as a worksheet to study. Depending on the lesson, my daughter did it both ways.
There is a 30 question practice exam at the conclusion of each chapter. The course teaches speech preparation -- how to research and write a speech and how to make it fit properly in every situation -- and speech delivery. The speech delivery includes stress management and practice techniques so students will be ready in any situation that they are called upon to give a speech. In addition to the videos, there is a word-for-word transcript provided which is perfect for taking notes.
What we like most about Study.com is that it is easy. There are resources for Pre-K students, middle school students, high school students, and college students. There are graduate and post-graduate courses available, as well as professional development courses. Students can study, earn credit, improve grades, and test prep all in one location. They can sit at a computer or download an app to tailor the learning process specifically for them. The coursework is fun and entertaining and available 24 hours a day/7 days a week. By spending just a few hours a week within a specific course, students can master the material given and learn with a purpose.
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