Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Calculus Online Course Info - Distance Calculus

I've taken Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and Probability Theory through Distance Calculus. All four courses were awesome. Dr. Curtis and the TA's were very responsive and helpful.
The biggest advantage of these courses, compared to taking a traditional course, is that in addition to the theory, I was forced to also think computationally. I have become quite adept at using LiveMath and Mathematica for doing calculations and plots.
All of the courses were accepted for credit transfer (Johns Hopkins University)

I took Calculus II through Distance Calculus and can't recommend it enough. Being able to take the course at my own pace while I was working full time was tremendously helpful, especially since I hadn't taken a math course for 5 years prior. The instruction was excellent and the software they used to teach the course was intuitive and facilitated the learning process very well. This calc II class enabled me to take multivariable calc, linear algebra, and real analysis at Harvard University's extension school, which ultimately qualified me for the economics PhD program that I will graduate from next year. 8 years on, I'm still grateful to Professor Curtis and Distance Calculus.

The course material was well explained through the videos and notebooks, and it was nice to receive feedback on each assignment and correct any mistakes. However, the software required for the course was ridiculously outdated, to the point where I had to reinstall a very old operating system on my computer to even be able to run it. It was annoying and tedious to use, and it sometimes crashed. The graders were also sometimes overly picky about the way that concepts had to be explained to be considered correct (specific wording, etc), but it wasn’t too bad. Having multiple final exams seemed a bit excessive but again was not too bad. Overall, the main strength of this course is that it is completely asynchronous and self-paced, so I do recommend it if that is the most important factor to you. You will learn all of the material thoroughly, but you must be willing to deal with the more annoying aspects of the course (primarily the outdated technology).

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.