Reflections on my first semester of BYU-Pathway Worldwide
I thought I would write up a little review of BYU-Pathway Worldwide as when I was investigating the program I just wanted to know “What is BYU-Pathway like?” but it wasn’t very easy to find any content from people that had done the program with the exception of a few very brief YouTube videos that didn’t really tell me anything.
What is BYU Pathway like you ask? Let us start with what exactly BYU-Pathway Worldwide is.
What is BYU-Pathway Worldwide?
BYU-Pathway Worldwide was created to serve online students. Degrees are awarded by BYU-Idaho and Ensign College, while BYU-Pathway provides the resources to help applicants succeed. You start with 1 year of classes that help prepare you for admission into BYU-I or Ensign College and earn you credit for those institutions during that first year. This program is designed for busy adults that want to continue their education.
The best part, at least to me, is that this program locks in a VERY cheap credit hour price. At the time of writing this, July 23rd, 2021, the program locks in a $77 credit hour for students. Obviously, this will go up for future participants but while I’m doing it that was a major selling point to me as it means I should not have to borrow a single cent to complete a 4-year degree.
But you say “wait, Ryan, I Googled this and it looks like one of those Mormon religious things…”. Well, erm, yeah, it is. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has colleges, clears throat, just like the Jesuits have Georgetown University and Boston College, Notre Dame has a Catholic affiliation, etc. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has created this program for both members, and non-members, alike as education is something that the Church holds to be very important.
“But Ryan, I get that Notre Dame is a well known school, is this just some kinda degree mill from some university I’ve never heard of?” Nope. As of the time of this writing, U.S. News & World Report ranks BYU-I as the 13th best college. BYU-I is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.
Alright, enough of that, so you want to know what a semester is like, right? Well, I have just finished my first semester and, while finding parts of the program a bit annoying or just tedious, overall have been happy.
The Basics
At present, the program consists of 3 semesters spanning the course of a year. Each semester you do a religion class and a regular class for that first year, the religion class is to satisfy the religion requirement for BYU-I and, at least for the first semester, is very basic and not too painful or stressful.
The Gatherings
Each week you have a 2-hour‘ gathering’, while before covid these were in person (and may return to in-person at some point) my gathering is done via Zoom each week. The first hour we do the non-religion class, take a 5-10 minute break and then use the remainder of the second hour for the religion portion. These 2-hour gatherings are student led… yeah, at first I was like “ugh, this is going to be terrible” and “ugh, this is so annoyhing” and “ugh, I totally don’t want to have to lead 1-2 of these things each semester” but, you know, it’s really not that bad. I’ve found that after the first few weeks when we all figured stuff out, that I actually enjoy having a different student leading each week as really the bulk of what you do in the gathering is going over the stuff you self-studied and it is actually refreshing to me to have a different leading style for each hour every week. The gatherings have an agenda, provided ahead of time by the program, that you basically just read and help nudge people to discuss the topics. Some of it is done as the whole group and some is done in breakouts from 2 people to 3-4 people depending on what the agenda suggests for that portion. This sounds kinda blah but, again, once you get into the swing of things it actually works out rather nicely as it helps you to share personal experiences/thoughts and then come together as a mini group to share with the larger group what you discussed and how it applies to the material. As someone that has worked in an office for 16 years, this emulates an office/team dynamic really well and would be great for people that do not have that real-world experience.
The group you gather with, if it is anything like mine, is likely to contain quite a variety of people. My gathering contains 2 immigrants, a Canadian couple, people ranging in age from 20s to 60s, 2 individuals that are converts to the Church within the past year and a half, blue and white-collar workers, 2 recovered addicts, and even someone improving their life via education after having served time in prison, and we have 3 native languages represented with no communication difficulties in our group. It’s a truly diverse group and I’ve definitely been inspired by, and learned from, the unique experiences of my gathering-mates and I would suspect my unique experiences have also helped some of them. I definitely feel like I have a much more diverse group of people here than I would in a traditional brick-and-mortar college program where I live.
The Classes
The class content you access via a web portal like this:
From here you can click on your courses on the right hand side to open them. As an example here is what the PC 101 - Life Skills course modules look like for the first week:
In a typical week in the Life Skills class you will have a devotional video to watch, some reading material which covers some general life skills, writing and math instruction, a writing assignment that builds each week based on what you have previously been introduced to, a math quiz based on the math contained in the week’s lesson which may also include math from the previous weeks as a refresher, and then in the gathering module you can see the gathering agenda for the gathering and you will self-report that you attended the gathering after the gathering.
For the math extra links are included for videos and other content that can help you learn what is being taught if the course material is insufficient. You will also go over a sample problem in the gathering as a group that covers the material taught that week. For me the math was definitely a stumbling block as the highest thing I had passed in high school was pre-algebra (for those reading between the lines, yes I did not graduate from high school but I did obtain my GED when I should have graduated) but my wife teaches math for a living so I was very blessed to have her as a resource to be my personal tutor so don’t be afraid to ask those around you for help if you are struggling with some of the math. There will occasionally be short videos to watch in the self-study material too. This course would realistically take you 1-5 hours of self-study a week depending on your familiarity with writing and the math for the week.
For the religion course you have a comparable weekly course load:
You will have a few minute devotional to watch, personal study (scroll down for a screenshot of week 2 as an example of the amount of content), an assignment where you teach a friend/family member based on the material for that week which then has a couple of questions you answer in a few hundred words about what you learned teaching them/about the material, the gathering preparation which includes the agenda and some questions you will discuss as a group, and then a personal study report which is a few multiple choice questions then a few 75-300 word questions asking you to describe specific things about what you learned that week. I found this course required 1-2 hours a week of self-study/homework from me, your mileage may vary depending on your familiarity with the material. Here’s an example of what you will study in a week:
The Annoying Bits
Like with everything, there are some annoying bits:
People are going to drop out. My gathering by week 4 or 5 had lost 20-30% of the students, by week 10 we were at half the number we started with which means we went from needing to lead 1 gathering each to needing to lead 2 gatherings each. Your gathering is together for the entire 3 semesters so who knows how few of us will be left by the 3rd semester.
For the material you are already familiar with, it can feel like you are doing extremely tedious busywork. The assignments in each week can be quite repetitive, I imagine this is great if the material is new to you, but if you are competent with the concepts/familiar with the material it can be a wee bit annoying.
There is a limited ability to see each week’s content until close to that week begins. I would prefer to be able to look at the material for the whole course the first day and not just the headings. Given full time work, a calling, a wife, and trying to maintain some sort of life outside of these things it would be nice to be able to know in advance how much time I’m going to need to set aside for a given week
Everything is digital. If you are someone that likes to hold what you are reading, or to highlight and make notes, I hope you have access to a printer as you’re going to have to print the content. Personally I don’t mind this, but watching my wife work on her Masters degree I can tell some people 100% need to have physical media they can scribble and color all over.
The entire web interface is just a bit clunky and will either require a lot of muscle memory, a lot of bookmarks, or a lot of tabs chronically open to be able to quickly look at everything for the two courses. There is an announcements section which honestly, I completely forgot existed after the first couple of weeks and only remembered it existed when someone, in my final week of the semester, mentioned in my gathering that their religion grader had shared a bunch of stuff that way and I’ve found no way to receive notifications to my email when new content is posted.
Attending the gatherings are a good deal of your grade. You’re expected to miss none, but my understanding has been you can get away with missing 1-2 before it is a very serious problem and you will lose points for both classes by missing just one gathering. I understand the same mostly applies for traditional college but in a program designed for busy working adults, that may or may not have children, that may or may not have Church callings with demands, that may or may not be single parents, I personally think this should be a little more relaxed. If you do know, in advance, that you are going to be unable to make your gathering you CAN visit a gathering that meets at a different time or day that one week though, so that does allow for planned absence and in my gathering we’ve had 2 people attend ours for a week each due to scheduling conflicts.
In general the byupathway.org website is wholly lacking in information about the program and what information is there is often buried under multiple page navigations. It is often frustrating to try and find out any sort of information about the program itself as well as what transitioning to BYU-I will be like after the completion of your 3 semesters.
If you have previous college credit, they will NOT tell you what will transfer until you finish the 3 semesters of Pathway… I really want to know how many of my credits from when I attempted an associated previously would transfer so I could judge how quickly I might complete a 2-year degree and 4-year degree, as if very few were going to transfer I likely just wouldn’t have done the program because I’ve already sunk a ton of money into those credits 15 years ago. This is extremely frustrating.
Conclusion
Overall I’m happy I decided to do the program. I grumbled quite a bit to my wife throughout the first semester but I don’t regret doing it and look forward to knocking the next two semesters out so I can start “proper” college and know how close I am to finishing my associates and heading full-steam ahead into a bachelors degree. As a final assignment for the PC101 class we were asked to write a letter to new students, I’ll share that here:
“Welcome to Pathways! You are in for an interesting ride. I remember being in your shoes wondering what classes would be like and who would be taking them with me. I can tell you that you are likely to meet some unique people from many different walks of life. Hang in there and enjoy your group. They will be a big motivation and support system to help you keep going. Two things that you should do to prepare for the course are to set aside some time every week to complete the workload and be open to help from others. It is important that you are prepared for each class so that you can contribute to the discussions. I would say that you need at a minimum 2-3 hours a week to read the materials, watch the videos, and complete the assignments. What really helped me was to set aside the same block of time each week/day to complete the work. It kept me on schedule. Another big thing for me was getting help on the math from my wife. Just remember that it is okay to ask for help. Your classmates will be a strength to you but have a support system. People who ask you every week how it is going and who will help you even if it is just reading with you or looking over your papers.
Coupled with the preparation, two things that helped me succeed were to finish the assignments a day or two before the due dates and listening to some of the assigned talks instead of reading them. Getting the assignments done early gave me a cushion in case there was extra reading or math vides for the week. It also helped me to not feel anxious or stressed about the upcoming class on Wednesday. I also found that reading each talk took a long time. It was faster for me to listen to them online and follow along. I could stop the video if I needed to and look at paragraphs or places in depth.
My only other piece of advice is that you can do this. Many of the people who started with me dropped out over the weeks until we were down to just a handful of us. I am sure each one had their reasons for not continuing, but it has been extremely rewarding to me to complete my first semester. Remember the reasons why you started pathways and stick to those. Praying for help is also great too.”