Sophia Learning’s Ancient Greek Philosophers course is actually quite short compared to the other courses in its catalog. It only has 1 Milestone and 1 Touchstone. The Touchstone, however, is a 3-4 page essay that makes up a significant portion of the final grade.
I actually enjoyed this course. The material wasn’t presented in a way that was overly complicated and I thought the texts did a great job providing examples to explain the theories and viewpoints of the various philosophers covered. Obviously, the philosophers studied in this course are from the Western Hemisphere. If choose to take this course you will be learning about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle among others.
Like with all Sophia courses, to pass you must achieve a total average score of 70% or better. Since both the Challenges (concept review questions) and the Milestone (comprehensive chapter test) are both open-book, I didn’t find them to be difficult. The most challenging part of the course for me was the Touchstone Essay.
The rubric for the essay is very comprehensive, and fortunately, you don’t have to do any outside research for the project. All the information that you need to cite and reference is in the course text. Personally, essays have always made me a bit nervous, so I had to psych myself up for a few days before I finally sat down and tackled the essay.
Essentially, I outlined each question in the rubric and wrote down all my thoughts and any citations that I wanted to use underneath. It should be noted that if you quote the text you HAVE to cite the section the quote came from. Like any educational institution/company, Sophia does not tolerate plagiarism. A paper that has plagiarism will be returned as a zero grade. In-line citation is required for this paper.
After gathering the information and necessary citations according to the rubric, I went about formatting my essay. I actually enjoyed this assignment as I find philosophy in general to be very interesting. After submitting it through the online portal, I had to wait about 5 days to receive feedback and my grade. I was quite pleased that my efforts paid off! I ended up getting a perfect score on my essay.
My final course score was 98% (I had missed one question on the Milestone exam). I took this course because it will fulfill my 3-credit philosophy general education requirement at the university I will be transferring to.
My Final Verdict
I would definitely recommend this course if you need a philosophy course or general education course to fulfill your degree’s requirement. The essay wasn’t bad at all. I’m just a bit of a perfectionist, so I tend to stress about everything (I definitely need to work on that). Sophia Learning’s Ancient Greek Philosophers course gets 5/5 stars from me.
Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve taken or plan to take Sophia’s Ancient Greek Philosophers course. If you’ve already completed the course, how was your experience?
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