(This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Study.com. All thoughts and opinions are my own.)
If you are a homeschooler, you've probably enjoyed a summer break for several weeks or more now. So if you are like me, your thoughts are beginning to turn to the coming school year. You may be thinking about curricula and planning extracurriculars.
So I wanted to share with you a new resource available for those of you with high schoolers. Earlier this year, I told you about the study guides for the CLEP tests that are available from Study.com. Today, I want to tell you about an additional test prep resource for students looking for college credit through DSST exams.
DSST Exams
The DSST Program allows students to gain college credit for their prior knowledge or learning that happens outside the traditional classroom. While some test areas overlap with CLEP (like college calculus), there are also some DSST exams that don't have CLEP equivalents, like technical writing, public speaking, and several specific history exams, like "History of the Vietnam War".
DSST Study Guides
I counted 33 DSST Study Guides covering so MANY fascinating topics! Some of the themes are:
There are thousands of prep questions, more than 3,000 prep video lessons, and help available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You'll have access to:
- Environmental Science
- Lifespan Developmental Psychology
- Business Ethics and Society
- Introduction to World Religions
- Human Cultural Geography
- Criminal Justice
- Astronomy
- and many more!
There are thousands of prep questions, more than 3,000 prep video lessons, and help available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You'll have access to:
- Practice tests with areas of strength and weakness
- Tools for tracking progress
- Video lessons paired with quizzes to help you solidify your knowledge
What is in the DSST exam study guides?
So let's take a look at the actual courses. I selected DSST Personal Finance because I think that ALL children should take this course in high school and before they leave home to be on their own.
There are three tabs for (each) course:
Overview
The overview tab includes a course summary with a brief description of what you'll be learning.
You'll also find your Progress Tracker on this page. The great thing about this course is that you can go as fast or as slow as you'd like. And when you finish for the day, it notes where you stopped so that the next time you login, you just open this page and click on "Your next lesson" to pick up where you left off. It also tracks the number of quizzes you've completed.
Before you begin the lessons, you can click on "Course Practice Test" to check your knowledge of this course with a 50-question practice test. After you complete the test, you'll immediately see your score, how long it took you to complete the test, and your areas of weakness and strength. You'll also see which questions you got wrong, the correct answers, and the option to watch the video that explains the correct answer.
On the overview page, you can also see that this course has 12 chapters and each chapter has anywhere from five to 12 lessons. Each lesson has a quiz at the end.
Syllabus
This page gives a more detailed description of the course. But what I really like is that it also includes a section called "Course Uses" which gives a bulleted list of all the benefits of taking the course.
There's also a list of the course topics.
Exams
This page lists all of the tests and quizzes available for this course. If you feel that you already know quite a bit, you can take the Placement Test to see which lessons you need to cover.
And of course, you can find all the practice tests for each chapter.
The Lessons
The actual lessons are presented in a simple and easy to understand format. There's a short video to watch, followed by a lesson transcript so you can review what you've just learned. But if you prefer to take your own notes, there's a little tab on the upper right corner that allows you to type up things you think are important or questions you want to research later.
Access
Study.com offers three subscription levels:
You can try it out yourself with their five-day free trial. And I do encourage you to try it. But be sure to cancel your subscription if you decide it's not for you or your child.
Overall, this is a fantastic resource for homeschoolers! I think the video courses are perfect for students and deliver the information in a way that is easily understood. And I always love it when my kids can earn college credits and SAVE US TIME AND MONEY!
Am I right?
So don't wait. If you think this is the right tool for you to incorporate into your homeschool, head over to Study.com to learn more and sign up!