Differential Equations Course - Distance Calculus Course Information

I have difficulty learning calculus based math, akin to dyslexia when examining the symbolic forms, equations, definitions, and problems. Mathematica based calculus courses allowed me to continue with my studies because of the option of seeing the math expressed as a programming language for which I have no difficulty in interpreting visually and the immediate feedback of graphical representations of functions, equations, or data makes a huge impact on understanding. Mathematica based calculus courses should be the default method of teaching Calculus everywhere.

This course was more affordable than many, and the flexible format was terrific for me, as I am inclined to work very diligently on tasks on my own. It could be dangerous for a person who requires external discipline more, but it works well for self-starters, allowing you to prioritize when you have other pressing work. I was a full time teacher adding a math certification, and this course allowed me to master the math while working around my teaching schedule and fitting work into moments here and there when I had time. I was able to transfer the credits to Montana State University, Bozeman for my teaching internship program without a hitch. The instructors were all very helpful and patient, even when I failed to see a ridiculously simple solution on one problem after 20 emails back and forth. Overall, I was more pleased with my experience in this class than I was with any of my other 9 courses.

This course is amazing! I took it as a requirement for admission to an MBA program, and couldn't have been happier with the quality and rigor of the course. I previously took calculus two times (at a public high school and then a large public university commonly cited as a "public ivy"), this course was by far the best and *finally* made the concepts click. Previously I had no idea what was going on because terrible PhD students were teaching the course and saying stuff like "a derivative is the slope of a tangent line" - ??? but what does that mean ???, but the instructors in the Shorter University course explain everything in ways where it FINALLY made sense (e.g., "imagine a roller coaster hitting the top of a hill, there's a moment where it shifts momentum and you're not accelerating or decelerating, that's what a 0 rate of change is - that's when the derivative would be zero"). They explain everything in multiple ways and relate it to other concepts. It all made perfect sense when I finally had a good instructor. Really recommend this class

After completing all the math offered by my highschool, I switched over to Roger Williams for Calculus II and onward. Overall, it has been a pretty great way to understand the topics online, with transferrable college credits. The exams are not terrible, and the courses cover the vast majority (if not all) of topics covered by traditional courses, with some unique ones added to. So far, I have taken four courses, with another one or two before I graduate.

The only problem with the course is the lack of pen and paper work. This shouldn't come as a crazy surprise with an online course, but there is not much emphasis on symbolic computation. Mathematica or other software does most of the heavy computation for you. The lectures usually show how to solve the problems through paper, but those skills are rarely put into practice. Literacy Sheets act as a way to do some of that (especially with the Calculus II & III course).

All in all, this isn't a huge issue. I just memorize and practice things like double integration, Laplace, ODE solving, matrix diagonalized form, row operations, etc. With a little outside work, this resolves itself. Without Roger WIlliams, I probably would not have been able to take any of these math courses in highschool.

So overall, a great choice for highschool advanced math, especially with transferrable credits.

The professor as well as the TAs give great feedback when you need help with problems and the videos are great at explaining concepts. Return time on work is good and the work is not too much to handle.

This course gives a perspective on Linear algebra that no traditional course does. I’d say i gained much more intuition for this subject from the DC course than my friends who took traditional courses elsewhere. As a cs major, this version of learning with visualization has helped me a lot in understand ML models. However the course doesn’t have videos for the last 2 chapers so i had to self learn with the mathematica notebooks. Response times are a little slow but since it’s a remote class, i guess it’s justified. Overall amazing course and definitely take this over traditional lin alg classes.