Student Guide
Welcome to Sophia Pathways
We’re glad you’ve chosen Sophia to take the next step in planning your educational journey and
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reducing the cost of your college tuition.
Your Sophia Pathways online college course is designed to be completed in 60 days or less. You may start at
any time and learn on your own schedule. There are no classes to attend or weekly assignments to complete.
Using Sophia courses to earn college credit and lower the cost of your college education is simple:
Dive right into problem solving mode with our Challenges, learning new concepts along the way through
our instructional tutorials.
Successfully complete timed Milestones, demonstrating your mastery of the concepts.
Successfully complete the Final Milestone, demonstrating your retention of key course concepts.
Submit your final score, and we will provide you with instructions on requesting your official transcript.
HOW IT WORKS
To earn a Sophia transcript, you must:
Complete each Challenge by attempting each of the questions.
Pass each Unit Milestone by getting at least half of the points in each assessment.
Achieve a total average score of 70% or better across all Challenges and Milestones.
Pass your Final Milestone with a score of 50% or higher, which contributes to your overall course score.
WHAT IS A CHALLENGE?
Sophia courses are designed using a problem-based learning model. You can expect to engage in real world
scenarios. To assist you in solving these Challenges, we provide tutorials that help you understand the key
concepts behind each problem.
Each Challenge encompasses an average of 5-10 practical problems to solve. You have multiple attempts to
solve these problems and you may leave and return to Challenges whenever you want to continue your
learning and improve your score (as long as you have remaining attempts). You must attempt all of the
Challenge questions at least once in order to advance to the Milestone for that unit.
WHAT IS A MILESTONE?
Milestones test your mastery of the concepts taught in the course. Each Milestone consists of 20-30 questions
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on average. You have a set amount of time to complete each Milestone, which is displayed on the Course
Dashboard. You must get at least half of the questions correct to pass— but keep in mind that you need to
achieve an average score of 70% across all Challenges and Milestones. Milestones are weighted two to three
times as much as Challenges for the purpose of calculating your final score. If you do not pass a Milestone,
you will be given one opportunity to retake it.
Each Milestone has a corresponding Practice Milestone that you can use to check your readiness before
attempting the actual Milestone. You’ll find similar questions to the actual Milestone, along with answers.
Note: Some courses may have Touchstones in lieu of Milestones, while others may have both. Your Course
Dashboard will display the assessment types you can expect in your course.
WHAT IS A TOUCHSTONE?
For students in certain courses, a Touchstone is a project-based assessment that helps you apply mastery of
the concepts to solve an authentic problem. Each Touchstone consists of a project-based deliverable. Each
Touchstone is checked for originality and then submitted for manual grading, and all submissions must be
unique to the course— you may not submit work you have written for previous courses. You can work on a
Touchstone whenever you want; however, you must pass the Unit Milestone before you can submit the
Touchstone for that Unit for grading. Please be aware that it could take up to seven business days to get a
Touchstone grade back. You must get at least half of the available points to pass a Touchstone— but keep in
mind that you need to average 70% across all Challenges, Milestones, and Touchstones to pass the course. If
you do not pass a Touchstone, you will be given one opportunity to resubmit it.
WHAT IS THE FINAL MILESTONE?
Upon successful completion of all Challenges and Milestones, you will be ready to take the Final Milestone. A
score of 50% or higher is needed to pass the Final Milestone and complete your course. One-unit courses, as
well as certain courses that include Touchstone assignments, may not have a Final Milestone.
BEST PRACTICES FOR THE SUCCESSFUL
STUDENT
Challenges
Read through each of the questions in the Challenge first so that you have a general idea of what to look
for as you watch/read tutorials.
View all the tutorials linked to the Challenges. They can be found under the tab “Helpful Tutorials” to the
right of the Challenge “Question” tab, or may be displayed on the right side of the question itself, and
provide the information needed to complete that Challenge.
Take notes on the tutorials as you watch them and write down key terms and definitions, processes,
diagrams, etc.
Use our “Many Ways to LearnTM” format to view, read, or listen to tutorials from various instructors. This
will allow you to find the instructor or tutorial that you prefer based on your learning style.
Use your notes to complete the Challenge questions.
If you struggle with a concept, use the “I Need Help with this Question” link at the bottom of the question.
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