Bryan College Distance Learning has a variety of online courses including Psychology, English, Literature, and History. This review deals with General Psychology 111 with Dr. Liz Moseley. General Psychology is a freshman-level introductory psychology course and is a basic requirement of most colleges. Bryan College is a SACS accredited college (see a listing of their other accreditation at http://www.bryan.edu/381.html), and as such their courses should transfer to most other US colleges and universities.

I found the application process easy. With a few clicks of my mouse, my daughter Melissa was registered. Bryan needed a copy of her SAT scores, her high school transcript, and a $15 application fee to complete the process. The course fee for dual enrolled students was $399, and the textbook was around $100 new (which is a modest price for a college textbook but more than I wanted to spend, so we got ours used).

Bryan College is homeschool friendly and supports dual enrollment. Distance learning students must be 16 years of age, have a 3.0 GPA, and have completed their sophomore year of high school. The staff in the Distance Learning office was very helpful. I had to make several phone calls to the Distance Learning office, and they were very kind. If they did not know the answer to my question, they would tell me that they needed to look into the matter and would get back to me. They also responded promptly to emails.

I had to contact Dr. Moseley twice before class began. She was both pleasant and helpful. I appreciated the quickness of her responses. I did not have any contact with Dr. Moseley during or after the class. Melissa felt she was a good teacher.

The following is my daughter Melissa's review of the course:

This seven-week psychology class gave me an excellent understanding of the basics of psychology. With a subject as extensive as psychology, a college introduction to psychology class cannot be expected to give a student an extensive knowledge. Bryan's online course was hard work, and there was a substantial amount of information to cover each week. The greatest issue I had with the course was with the required online power point presentations that we had to watch each week as part of our coursework. The power point instructor had an uninteresting voice. It was very difficult to listen to him for long. I greatly enjoyed the flexibility of the course material. Other than an hour set aside for a weekly chat, I was able to do all my work on my own time. Overall, I believe that Bryan's psychology class proved beneficial to my education in addition to being a fascinating class.

Distance learning is not for every student. Students must be self-motivated and willing to do a lot of work to complete a semester course in 7 weeks (as of 5/31/10 the distance schedule has listed General Psychology 111 as 8 weeks). Students who are not committed to being on time to online course meetings and finishing assignments at a rapid pace should consider waiting until they are more mature before doing online college education. Students who are willing to do the work will find that the Bryan College courses will stretch them and help them to grow academically. I highly recommend Bryan College distance education and plan to enroll my younger children in online classes once they are high school juniors.

Product review by Tina Rice, Contributing Writer, and Melissa Rice, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, June 2010