Vista Higher LearningReviews 105

I'm like 99% sure that this thing grades things with AI, If you make a tiny mistake, you get zero. This site is a scam that exploits college students who need to take a foreign language class. I'm a freshman at Newpaltz taking Spanish 101, its been 2 weeks and I already hate it.

If you are a college student ESPECIALLY one using financial aid or barely making ends meet DO NOT ORDER A BOOK FROM VHL! You will most likely not get a physical copy of the book, and you will not be able to sell the book after use or get a refund. You're essentially paying $100.00+ for a CODE to a book that you can only use for one semester and never again. IT IS A COMPLETE SCAM. Take another class because any class that uses the VHL platform is not worth it and completely predatory to students struggling with finances. Even if you aren't struggling with finances this is a SCAM.

To all the people who created the "speech" section, go F u C K yourself🖕. I have been sitting here for the past 30 minutes repeating the numbers 1-30 flawlessly, FLAWLESSLY, and this bull $hit a$s website keeps saying wrong, wrong, wrong. PLEASE fix your microphone because I am almost on the verge of destroying my computer as I know it. If anyone else is dealing with this problem use my comment to reply under.

I contacted VHL before I chose the length of my subscription. I asked if my college continued using Portales 2.0 IN SECTION 2, SP 102. The sales person said my college does not use VHL the next semester. I bought a 6 month subscription. When I signed up for 102 the teacher said VHL was the text. When I contacted VHL and asked to pay the difference between a 6 month subscription and a 2 year subscription HL reps acknowledged I was provided incorrect information. Still they refused to let me pay the difference and charged the full price. In so doing, I was required to pay $160 extra. I'm a college s tudent!
As for the paper text, it doesn't include the questions/conversations required to complete the assignments. Worthless!
Portales 2.0 is not user friendly. The speakers go way too fast and there is no way to slow the speed in the assignments. Duolingo includes this option.
In an unscientific survey, 100% of my classmates said they HATE VHL Portales 2.0. Some professors at my school are "advisors" to VHL. Coincidence? Inside job? It doesn't pass the smell test.

The primary issue with this is the grading system, which is extremely discouraging and anxiety inducing. There is zero partial credit, even for a perfectly correct response. It must be word for word, letter for letter, what the program deems the singular correct answer. This even applies to full sentence length responses, and it is just not feasible to ask the teacher for partial credit for EVERY. SINGLE. ASSESSMENT. Because it risks painting the student as greedy and grade-obsessed, when really, we just want the points we deserve. It is extremely disheartening when I answer with the entire sentence structured and conjugated correctly, but receive a zero because of a single typo--ONE CHARACTER OFF!--out of an entire correct sentence. Many times the system marks completely correct responses 100% wrong, just because I left out the subject pronoun when it was completely unnecessary. It is way to easy to end up with a 70 due to minor errors like these despite knowing the content thoroughly. Additionally, I tried to contact support to ask them about a flaw in the system, but only received an automated bot response. I would stay away from this program if possible, as it has caused nothing but extreme stress and worsened anxiety.

Too complicated to maneuver. I have learned nothing. I just cheat on my assignments every single one. I would rather scrape my knees off glass then do this everyday.

My senior in high school signed up for a course to start the semester and obtained the required textbook for it from Vista Higher Learning. After further discussion with her advisor she decided to drop the course and take something more appropriate for her direction within the first two days. VHL will not refund the $149.00 text. Granted their policy does state "No refunds, no exceptions" for online texts somewhere in the writeup on it. However, this policy and response takes advantage of 17 year olds and their families who are simply trying to move forward in their education. This policy alone should be enough that no school should utilize Vista Higher Learning for providing the texts for their courses.

All in all, in person learning trumps this in every way. It's nothing unique or special, only multiple choice questions assinged by the teacher with maybe videos, audio, and a calendar with due dates. Every other site on the internet has these, don't pay for this one. VHL was just fine in high school when it was free and all, but now when we have to buy textbooks for college the $#*! is a complete scam. Careful cause their policy is no refunds, so goodbye $20 and their programs they run suck for handling them anyhow.

This website needs to be updated with the following errors. There needs to be better examples for the assignments and they marked answers that were correct wrong. The price for the book should be cheaper

Among the hundreds of activities, there are probably just a couple that are good. A waste of money and time.

The teach gave us wrong info on which book to buy (we bought the 'Prime' version, needed 'Supersite'). VHL wouldn't let us return one and buy the other. In fact, we had purchased the more expensive version, and instead of just giving us access to the Supersite version and keeping the difference, we had to completely eat the more expensive, and buy the less expensive version. The customer service person was nice, but utterly unhelpful. I have recommended the school find a different vendor for this product, and will continue to advocate against this company if they can't fix this type of thing.

Don't know if Vista Higher learning vet their teachers, but they hire the likes of Rosanna Keppeler who on October 26th, 2019 in Stafford Virginia (Case # 179GC*******-00) was arrested for refusing to take a breathalyzer test. Consequently convicted of a DUI. I'm sure there are many good teachers out there, Why encourage drunk driving. I had a close family member seriously crippled for life from a drunk driver. If this is some kind of forgiveness to this person, why don't they disclose this first. Why should i spend money learning from a fake?

I was excited to enroll in an online class for self-paced learning, the concept worked well in regard to working full time while trying to earn my degree.

I was under the impression that I was a strong-willed, emotionally resilient person. That was before opening this website for the first time, and I am not exaggerating. There have been a few times where I have been at a breaking point and had to walk away.

Right off the bat, this program is unforgiving and incredibly time consuming. It's killed any motivation to truly learn Spanish, which like I said, I was excited to do before!

I cannot believe that the college I'm enrolled in would sign off on this course. Please don't make the same mistake I did.

This website will use the most confusing and twisted methods upon initial purchase of their material to try and milk as much money out of their consumers. I purchased my online textbook access for $150, as I was told I needed it to access my class. Low and behold, even then I could not access my class, as they now told me I needed to buy extra supplementary content in order to ACTUALLY gain access to my class. Now instead of getting the initial bundle of both items which would have saved me money, they scammed me into buying both seperately in order to maximize profits. Extremely scummy practice, cannot wait to see this company fall to lawsuits.

I purchased what I thought was a hardcover textbook & workbook. I made a mistake and purchased only the digital text & workbook. I received the workbook and contacted them to return the digital book or pay the difference for the hardcover text. They said their systems do not allow for partial refunds of any kind. I don't know any online purchase I have ever made where I have to return ALL the items to get the correct item. Now I have to incur the shipping costs to return the physical workbook and get refunded just to purchase it all over again. I will be making that purchase somewhere else and I'll even be willing to pay more. Ridiculous. They don't 0 stars, but you have to select at least 1 to submit the review.

I have too much to say about VHL, so much so that I simply cannot fit it all here. But, let me start with the basics: First of all, it is ridiculously expensive in terms of online college coursework. It is practically a waste of money, especially considering the textbook itself is typically irrelevant, because almost all of the assignments are contained separately, which brings me to my second point. The assignments are perhaps the absolute WORST aspect of VHL. They are tedious, they are long, and they are many. I have around 30+ assignments due per day, usually each containing tedious questions of vocab and grammar conventions. The content itself is easy, it is absorbable and in any other circumstance I would likely enjoy learning Spanish, but VHL makes it a horrible experience. Now to my third point: I have ADHD, I am neurodivergent, and struggle greatly to keep up with "normal" educational standards. What might take a normal student under 2 hours to complete these assignments takes me three to four times longer, extending what should be a maximum of four or five hours of schoolwork per day to around eight or nine, which means I have to dedicate at least a good six or seven hours of my day SOLELY to VHL, not including the other work I have in my class. The sheer amount of coursework and assignments does not help me learn, if anything it is a chore to simply get through.

I float aimlessly around a passing grade and I am content with it, because I would rather simply pass the class and please the algorithmic assignments than actually absorb any of the information or even attempt to learn the language. It entirely ruined the aspect of learning another language through the educational system, and I could receive an equally, and arguably more, beneficial learning experience from utilizing free programs like Duolingo or even simply teaching myself through media and television. VHL is totally useless, and the workload, combined with its inaccessibility and ineffective grading system, it is closer to a form of online torture than a teaching tool. I couldn't recommend VHL any less, and I beg foreign language professors to cease their usage of this system.

It is nothing short of baffling how unintuitive the learning 'process' is for this service. The amount of mandatory homework for classes is incredibly tedious and does nothing but frustrate and agonize when they randomly decide to use words they have never gone over in quizzes and exams, forcing you to use google translate if you're lucky enough to not be proctored, or to bite the bullet and hope you can guess correctly using context clues. You might as well just watch youtube videos, you will probably get further.

- This website is horrible. The activities are ridiculously hard and if you don't understand what you're doing wrong, you either have to look up the answers on quizlet to save your grade, then learn nothing, or you fail the assignment.
- It was extremely expensive.
- Not geared for helping people learn. The 'interactive' textbook doesn't even pronounce words, or let you copy and paste directly out of the book.
- Some of the problems in the book are so advanced. Without help it's almost impossible to learn because they do not provide ANSWERS. Even if you wanted to put in extra hours to study, it's virtually impossible if you're not understanding the problems because there are no answers or explanations to any questions.
- Quality: This textbook is not organized in a way that English speakers will easily grasp the grammatical usage in the Spanish language. The set up is honestly so counter-intuitive.

I am trying to do my assignment and the website won't let me do anything and sometimes says that th right answer is wrong and you run out of attempts