AP Courses from EDX or GA Virtual? Have you used them?

Costs of online courses, conflicting schedules and living overseas are causing issues with many AP options (I don’t need the AP designation). I’m just looking for experiences with these courses and wondering if they are good prep for the AP course, and how people have used them. For example, the Preparing for the AP English Language and Composition Course seems to be billed as a supplement, but requires 10-15 hours over 35 weeks? That makes it sound more like a full-English course – just without reading more full books.

GA Virtual is laid out – but I’m wondering if there is supposed to be a text to use alongside it, or if we just use it as written – adding in our own labs for science, and things like that.

I used the “preparing for AP Statistics” from EdX. (I think that’s the title. I just always got to the course by looking at the picture!) It recommended lot of hours for a years worth of study (I think). I probably did 50 - 60 hours at most, including studying, reviewing, making flashcards, etc. for a semester and got a four on the exam. I don’t know about the AP English Language and Composition course, but I was very pleased with the statistics course. I’d prefer to take an actual course for English since writing essays is a huge part of the exam. Feedback = necessary. I took AP English Language and Composition from FLVS and got a 4. We read three nonfiction books, and a play and novel. We had to get these ourselves. Most assignments had the texts built into the course, such as poetry or excerpts.