College Algebra (MATH 1201) at UoPeople

I’m happy with the progress I made this term. I didn’t have an excellent last term because I had the same instructor for both Microeconomics/Macroeconomics, who told us upfront in the first week that grades given by other students via peer assessment were final. And I was graded several times unfairly, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Unfortunately, that’s the drawback of studying at the UoPeople. Also, in retrospect, I felt that pairing Micro/Macro didn’t work well for me. It had too many readings. I have found that a business/science course coupled with liberal arts is the way to go for me to enjoy the classes and understand the material entirely. Arts have a profound impact on my life, so I find it natural to study it with the sciences.

Before taking College Algebra (MATH 1201) at the UoPeople, I'll admit that I was a bit nervous as I heard comments on Facebook and other forums like it was the most challenging thing they had seen, and the Final Exam was tough. What should one do when they hear something like that? Either you escape reality by avoid taking the class until the end of your program, or you face it like a brave woman or a grown-up, which is what I exactly did.

As I've mentioned, I already have a Bachelor's degree in Arts from a traditional university, and I was always good at mathematics and got straight A's in high school. I was interested in Computer Science, so before studying arts, I studied Computer Science for a year and took courses like Calculus I and II and aced them. However, when the school started teaching programming languages like C+ and Java, I realized that I sucked at programming, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't understand what exactly was happening when writing a piece of code. In fact, I even struggled at writing computer programs, so I switched to Arts and graduated in it. Anyway, my previous strong foundation in mathematics did help me out in College Algebra, but I still had to work hard.

My instructor at UoPeople didn't speak English well, but it was still good enough to convey his thoughts to the students. The class was small, with only 19-20 students. Initially, it was more than that, but many dropped out during the first week, and I don't blame them. The instructor also didn't change unfair peer assessment grades given by other students. I'm a very lenient person as long as the work you did is yours and you tried, and I always grade others fairly. However, I was graded unfairly twice, but the instructor blatantly refused to change the grade, saying he respected my peer's grading. For instance, I didn't expect that anyone could grade another student like the following:

Nonetheless, the instructor's good thing was that he provided constructive feedback, was extremely accessible, and replied within hours if you needed help.

The book for this class was quite decent, in my opinion. It's not the book mentioned in the course repository. The school has changed the book. It's very colorful and interesting now. Before the class started, I had read a few chapters from the old book. But when the class began, it was surprising to see a better and updated book. Each week, you're given homework questions to solve (not part of the assignments) from the book. Some of the questions on the exam/Graded Quizzes are slight variants and sometimes the same as homework questions/examples from the book. So, be sure to solve them all.

The Discussion Forum topics were quite vague. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but you could approach the question differently than your classmates, which is precisely what I did and got marks in the high 90s on Discussion Assignments. The Written Assignments were straightforward, though, and involved problem questions that could have had only one answer, unlike Discussion posts. You've to write reports for seven weeks straight on whatever you learned during the week for the Learning Journals. For the last Learning Journal, you've to solve problems, though.

Some of the questions for the Graded Quizzes came from the book and non-Graded Quizzes. The Graded Quizzes had 10 problems with an hour given to you to complete them. The Final Exam had 20 questions. You're given 2hrs to do the final, which in my opinion was more than enough to finish the exam. I was done in 1:30hrs. Some of the questions came directly from the textbook, previous quizzes, homework questions, and Written Assignments with some variations. So, make sure you solve all the homework questions and do the previous Graded and non-Graded quizzes. The questions the Final Exam covered mostly were polar to complex form and vice versa, the system of equations, use of trigonometry to solve practical problems, carbon life of carbon-14 problems, compound interest problems, amplitude, time period, the vertex of parabolas, line equations, Gaussian elimination problems, Moivre's theorem, radian to degree and vice versa, and arc length of a circle.

I've talked about how to do well on the course and possibly get an A here, so be sure to check it out. Your notes and practice are the main elements that will help you do well in this course. All things considered, College Algebra is a very satisfying course, and you shouldn't be wary of it as long as you study hard, do your homework, ask questions and put genuine effort into doing your work.