<p>My daughter will be in a special program next year that makes a regular science class impossible and the community college option schedule would be very difficult. I am looking into distance learning programs and wonder if anyone has knowledge of the program from BYU--or elsewhere.</p>
<p>Yes. Many of my homeschool students have attended these BYU distance learning classes. They have received high school credit for those courses listed as high school, college credit for the college-level ones. One of my students is in fact quite science-oriented (pre-med), and enrolled in a college-level genetics class. </p>
<p>The colleges recognize BYU courses for h.s. students in college admissions. (Requirements may differ among colleges as to accompanying descriptions & other documentation to be submitted.)</p>
<p>Naturally the problem with all online science classes is the unavailability of a live lab. So I never recommend these as a substitute for a core course such as Chem. It's a good choice to supplement core lab courses, though.</p>
<p>Many students at our little rural HS take BYU distance learning courses. Some of these kids are high achievers looking to supplement the education offered here and others are trying to make up credits they missed along the way. The classes are tough and like ^^ said, there i not an option for a live lab which makes lab science difficult but it is a good option and the students here who work at it do well.</p>
<p>My D took one class to get rid of a required class (a 'practical art' requirement) she didn't want to waste her time with in HS (her schedule was full with APs). The process to enroll and take the class from BYU was very smooth and the price was better than some other similar offerings and the public HS readily accepted the credit and was already quite familiar with BYU distance learning. I'd recommend it if they have what you want.</p>
<p>I have taken several distance learning science courses (Oceanography, Weather, Geology) from the University of Washington distance learning. I would especially recommend Geology, as it did include labs and was a good rigorous course that taught me how to look at the world around me from a geological perspective. The Oceanography and Weather courses were also good, but a little more regional than the Geology one.</p>
<p>The students I've known who've taken BYU courses generally feel that they're too easy. Maybe that's because they had me for chemistry, though.</p>
<p>I will second dmd's comment about the level of the BYU high school courses. If the student is an advanced type to begin with, the h.s. level course might be a little easy. (That's why my own student, advanced that she is, & ambitious, preferred the college level BYU genetics course.)</p>
<p>One of my son's friends took Physics through BYU online. There was some question about whether the UCs would accept the credit. It is probably prudent for the student to check with colleges they are interested in as each college may have it's own policy.</p>
<p>The course my D took through BYU was easy but it was only to get rid of the practical arts requirement of her HS so she could take an AP class instead. I think she took some kind of gardening course.</p>
<p>dmd, explain where/how the labs were taken via UW. I'm interested. UCCP used to offer corollary labs. However, it was sometimes up to the student to arrange those via schools or school districts. It's just been a pragmatic hurdle, that's all. I see the possibility of more cooperative arrangements with c.colleges or 4-yr. colleges + online science offerings, such as evening labs. I guess there are facilities issues, though -- & there could be security & insurance issues, as well.</p>
<p>I had a student who took a BYU health course online. It was required for graduation, but not something she wanted to waste a HS period on because she was doing a combination of honors/AP plus the Cisco PTS track. She was a very bright student and commented that the course took almost no effort (but that would have been true had she taken it in our school, too).</p>
<p>Epiphany: for the UW courses, the labs are done at home, as is the rest of the coursework. Instructions and kits were sent. That was why geology worked so well: it's easy to find rocks! For example, one lab required identifying rocks--landscape, ornamental, natural, it didn't matter--found in the local community, using a magnifying lens, then justifying our identifications. It was fun. Several labs were based on a box of labelled, numbered rocks.</p>
<p>For the weather unit, labs included things like measuring and charting our local weather, as well as some sample data sets that were supplied.</p>
<p>You're right, dmd. Now I remember that: there were individual kits. It's just that the way they do not mimic a live lab is in their reduced frequency. (A few experiments per semester, as opposed to weekly ones often at a h.s.)</p>
<p>Epiphany: for the UW courses at least, there was a reasonable amount of serious work, and very little "make-work". As a high school science teacher, I thought the balance was good. Another thing that was interested: we finished the entire text in all of the science courses I took, something that has never happened in a "live" science course. </p>
<p>Digression: In WA state, and others, teachers must regularly take courses to keep their certifications, thus I must take 3 semester-long courses every five years (150 credit hours) to keep my teaching certification. I find the UW distance learning courses to be the most convenient way to do that.</p>
<p>Well, dmd, I certainly wasn't meaning to criticize either the UW or the BYU courses as "make work." I'm not in a position to judge the UW classes (they sound GREAT, as described by a post above!) and I proctored the BYU classes. You bring up an interesting point about lab vs. text work. In my youth the latter was emphasized over the former; in modern education, the former is emphasized as the most important aspect (applied learning). Since these online courses have to pass approval standards for the schools they're affiliated with (if they're taken as an adjunct to a high school's curriculum, or if they're a core in it -- such as independent study program), then there has to be a minimum acceptable # of labs, anyway, to be approved as such a course. However, some homeschoolers, for example, are not affiliated with an accredited secondary institution. For them, college admissions requirements depend more heavily on documentation & course descriptions. Thus, colleges would in fact look more closely at aspects like percentage of labs. Some colleges care very much about the percentage of labs done in any high school science course. That's why, as I may have mentioned, we encouraged our homeschooled students to take at least some community college lab courses if at all possible, but especially if the student is an aspiring science major.</p>