Disappointing Scholars Online class

[Laura K (NC)]

https://www.scholarsonline.org/Info/index.php

 

My son took an HTML class online, our family's first online class. I was pretty disappointed with the whole thing. There was no text and there seemed to be very little structure. We wanted him to take this as a 1/2 credit class, in part, because it would be another verification that my own homeschool grading was consistent with more "objective" norms, but we were not told until the last class (today) that there would be no grades. I wish I had known that ahead of time.

 

I signed him up because I can't teach HTML, but I know enough about it that extremely little was asked of him, and I know he doesn't really know enough about HTML now for me to count it as a half credit... nor did he do enough work to earn a half credit. I feel like it was a real waste of money. Without a textbook my son can't be expected to go further on his own to learn the material. Now we're stuck where my son would have been before the class... with me trying to figure out which text might help him and figuring out what else he has to learn.

 

Just FYI. Maybe the classes in the regular school year are better. It would take a lot for me to sign up with Scholars Online again.

[Laurie4b]

Thanks for sharing that experience. I've been looking at some online classes and this helps me to know what to look into ahead of time.

[Anne]

I am sorry you had a bad experience with this class. I would definitely e-mail your concerns to them.

 

I just wanted to say that my younger dd took a literature class from Scholarsonline, and it had better structure and organization than any other online class either of my dds took.

 

So, while I think this is a great reminder to be very clear on the details of a particular class, I also would hate to see someone pass up an opportunity to be taught by some really great instructors, such as Dr. McMenomy, because of one bad class.

 

Anne

[NancyL]

I agree about the need for a book. My daughter did 3 SOL classes, and two had books. The one that didn't just somehow never was very satisfying because you never knew from one week to another what was coming next!!! You can have the syllabus, but if you can't do an overview of the course you really can't judge the scope and difficulty (IMHO) We ended up printing out all the readings, and then when you found the end of year test was comprehensive, my stack of printed readings were about 4-5 inches high, I am not kidding. (it was way too much printing) And I can't tell if young students can really absorb readings from web sites that are all at varying levels of difficulty. I'm sure it's OK for college students, but I just didn't feel comfortable without some nice, already printed text, (maybe even with a few pictures!)

[Kris]

https://www.scholarsonline.org/Info/index.php

 

My son took an HTML class online, our family's first online class. I was pretty disappointed with the whole thing. There was no text and there seemed to be very little structure. We wanted him to take this as a 1/2 credit class, in part, because it would be another verification that my own homeschool grading was consistent with more "objective" norms, but we were not told until the last class (today) that there would be no grades. I wish I had known that ahead of time.

 

I signed him up because I can't teach HTML, but I know enough about it that extremely little was asked of him, and I know he doesn't really know enough about HTML now for me to count it as a half credit... nor did he do enough work to earn a half credit. I feel like it was a real waste of money. Without a textbook my son can't be expected to go further on his own to learn the material. Now we're stuck where my son would have been before the class... with me trying to figure out which text might help him and figuring out what else he has to learn.

 

Just FYI. Maybe the classes in the regular school year are better. It would take a lot for me to sign up with Scholars Online again.

 

You might be able to salvage this, depending on how much he did get out of the class, by picking up something like HTML for Dummies or one of the O'Reilly books, and just have him work through it. I'm looking at O'Reilly's HTML & XTML The Definitive Guide and they do start from the beginning. If he's really interested, it will be a good reference for him later, too. And if he's *really* interested, Cascading Style Sheets The Definitive Guide would be a good one, too.

 

I've had these books for a long *long* time, so there might be newer editions. But because they've been out for so long, you might be able to find them used or on a swap site for much less than original retail.

 

Good luck!