What is the Best Online Calculus Course - Distance Calculus

There are many online Calculus course options on the internet currently. They basically separate into the following 3 categories:

Free MOOC Courses
These are courses that are offered for free (or nearly so), but they do not offer academic credit for the courses. Some of these courses are awesome and are an excellent resource for the student enrolled in a for-credit online Calculus course.
Publisher Courseware
Many academic textbook publishers offer multiple-choice based "course systems" where you take the Calculus course by getting a login to their system (which is the same for multiple schools, but the logos at the top are different), and you engage the course via endless multiple choice quizzes - reading their online textbook, doing problems by hand, choosing multiple choice options.
If you like this kind of course, then you have many options in taking such courses. We, personally, feel these course systems are cold, boring, and monotonous.
Mastery Learning & Human Interation & Computer Algebra Software
These types of courses are our favorites, of course, because that's what Distance Calculus is modeled on. Other great courses using this type of system are NetMath from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Here are some videos to explore our Calculus courses from Distance Calculus @ Roger Williams University. We will leave it up to you to decide which online calculus course is best!

Freshman Mathematics Courses

Semester
Credit
Hours

STEM Calculus I 44
STEM Calculus II 44

Honors STEM Calculus I 55
Honors STEM Calculus II 55
Honors Calculus I+II for Data Science 55

Sophomore Mathematics Courses

Semester
Credit
Hours

Differential Equations + Linear Algebra 55

General Mathematics Courses

Semester
Credit
Hours

Discrete Mathematics 44

Number Theory 44
Non-Euclidean Geometry 44

Mathematics Major Courses

Semester
Credit
Hours

Computational Abstract Algebra 44

Computational Differential Geometry 44

Is Distance Calculus For You?

How Fast Can You Complete a Distance Calculus Course?

After AP Calculus for High School Students

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Distance Calculus - Student Reviews

Christopher K.★★★★★

Posted: May 19, 2025

Courses Completed: Precalculus, Calculus I

Well organized and well explained content. Professor did a great job. I learned a lot.

Dist Calc saved a ton of hassle and time having to take calc at a local community college, which realistically would have delayed my entrance to BU LEAP by at least a year.

Would strongly recommend it.

Transferred Credits To: Boston University

Jenny Zuercher★★★★☆

Posted: May 18, 2025

Courses Completed: Precalculus, Calculus II

Dr. Curtis's courses are very difficult, but they are definitely worth it! I took Calculus 2 from Dr. Curtis in my senior year of high school and went into a combined Calculus 2 and Calculus 3 course my first year of college. This course prepared me, and I found that I already knew much of the Calculus 3 coursework. The most difficult part of these courses, in my opinion, is pacing yourself. If you can keep yourself on track, then you are all good to go!

Email: jenz2.home@icloud.com

Transferred Credits To: University of Iowa

Aiden B.★★★★★

Posted: Jul 29, 2026

Courses Completed: Calculus II, Multivariable Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra

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.

Email: abarger@protonmail.com

Lucas L.★★★★★

Posted: Jun 25, 2026

Courses Completed: Multivariable Calculus

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.

Transferred Credits To: University of Wisconsin

Hari K.★★★★☆

Posted: Jun 24, 2026

Courses Completed: Linear Algebra

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.

Julia★★★★★

Posted: Jun 24, 2026

Courses Completed: Calculus I

As a full-time business owner completing an Executive MBA, I needed to satisfy a calculus prerequisite without putting my work on hold. Distance Calculus made that possible. The fully self-paced structure let me work early mornings and weekends around an unpredictable schedule, which a fixed-semester classroom course never would have allowed.
The course covered the core business calculus material thoroughly — derivatives, optimization, integration techniques including u-substitution, the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, improper integrals, and numerical methods. The LiveMath computer algebra environment was central to the experience: it forced me to build each step explicitly rather than just arriving at an answer, which actually deepened my understanding of the mechanics.
Communication through the student portal was responsive when I had questions. For working professionals who need a rigorous, accredited calculus course on a flexible timeline, I'd recommend it.

Transferred Credits To: MIT Ebma