Liberty University Online Academy (LUOA) offers courses for online classes for K-12 students, including Dual Enrollment for high school students. Courses are taught with a Christian perspective and an emphasis on individualized learning. Class instruction is administered in an online format. Lessons are interactive and designed to stimulate student interest, engage students in the learning process and maintain their focus. Although coursework promotes self-instruction, parental guidance is essential. Daily parental review of student progress is highly encouraged.
(22 Reviews)
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Cons: high workload, set up, the actual teaching aspect, the teachers, etc.
Grades Used: 11
We used this website for the high school chemistry program. There were multiple problems when we first started. For example, the actual lesson plan was extremely confusing. Instead of making their own lessons, the program rips free chemistry-help videos off of YouTube. Since the videos are free, they are often confusing and low quality anyways. The rest if the lessons are just little diagrams (that sometimes don’t even show up) and maybe a few paragraphs with one or two “examples”.
With how confusing the lessons are, you’d think that maybe, just maybe the actual coursework would be different. But in reality, it was abysmal. Sometimes questions wouldn’t even show up, or they would just recycle questions instead of actually making new, informative course material. On top of that, they usually just ripped questions off of Coursera or Quizlet. You could literally find word-for-word answers off of one of those websites in seconds.
Despite this, the course is still incredibly rigorous, and not in a good way. After talking with a few other students, we learned that you pretty much had three options with this class. A) You lose sleep and time to do other work in favor of trying to finish all of the course work. B) split the one class in to two separate years because really, that’s how long it takes. Or C) End up not completing the course, winding up with a half credit, and not having the money to do option B and take the second “semester” your second year.
Over all, I really would not recommend this course. They need to fix their curriculum and add some more teaching material that the teachers/graders come up with themselves, instead of stealing other creators’ content.
I know some parents say that they don’t have issues with it, but I notice that those people either have younger students, or the classes are more humanities based rather than STEM classes.
Cons: none
Grades Used: 5,7
I don’t understand all of the negative feedback, our experience has been nothing but positive. Our boys in grades 5th & 7th love the program, they say it’s fun & fast. They are engaged in the lessons & doing very well. I’ve received excellent customer service from the staff at LUOA, the online interface is user friendly & intuitive. Happy to pay the tuition knowing that my boys are actually learning & retaining academic information. I don’t think they were learning much in the public school, they could never explain what they learned at the end of day…was usually “nothing” or “I don’t know” when I asked. Now that they are in LUOA they rattle off all sorts of interesting information from all subjects. Plus school no longer consumes our lives! The hours at school + homework? It’s clearly a broken system. I’m just so thrilled there is a quality alternative not to mention Biblical curriculum that my boys genuinely enjoy. I think our public school system needs to be entirely dismantled, it just isn’t working.
Cons: no oversight and lots of mindless work
Grades Used: 9
Be careful in trusting what is being presented. While it is, on paper, an excellent curriculum two things work against LUOA and they are VERY signficiant. First, the workload presented is heavy and it does not foster growth through RIGOR that you might see in another school or platform, this is just excess irrelevant or otherwse work that takes FOREVER and remember part of the reason home school is such a great idea is the opening up of time. LUOS has forgotten this. It seems that to complete things you will be doing more than that state mandated hours per week/month/year which is nuts. Second and more important is the issue of oversight. There is almost NONE. We saw our daughter get behind in a few ways and there was no shout outs from the ‘advisors’, until it was far down the road and then it was always our fault, which I understand and take responsibility for. In the end, it is my deal to make things work, I get that, but when you charge for a school which says there is student advisory and then you don’t provide it that is in a way theft. It’s wrong if you don’t by design provide it or, as is the case with LUOA they have seen HUGE growth in students, that they simply do not have the staff to handle, it. This last point is by their own admission, to me. Steer Clear until you see reviews from folks who have seen it cahnge.
Cons: terrible teacher contact, terrible service from school
Grades Used: 4-8
Used Liberty for years until they switched curriculum. Once that happened we decided to go to Alpha Omega Academy as they were the creator of the ignitia program Liberty used. Can not say enough about how helpful Alpha Omega Academy has been since the switch!
Cons: Everything
Grades Used: 9th-12th
The curriculum is to the point where they give you exess work for Jo reason. For example, every week in earth science (a freshmen class), the teacher gives you a lab that takes up to 5 hours to figure out. The way it is written is poor, and there is a lack of information to help fill them out. All classes seem to be like this. The core classes can take up to 4 hours to finish one lesson a day. Don’t get me started on they staff and they’re policies. Let’s just say I’m a 2nd year junior just because I had to be finishing one class. They won’t let me be a senior because of ONE class. So now I am going to be a year (if not more) behind all of my friends. I wont graduate on time.
Cons: Tons of errors in the curriculum, unrealistic expectations for young children, too expensive for what you get
Grades Used: 3, 8
This is our first year with LUOA and it will probably be our last if I can find something else. The errors in the curriculum are just ridiculous. I have two children, one in middle school and one in elementary school and I have reported countless errors to the teachers in the lessons, quizzes, and tests. For instance the lesson will say one thing and then the test will say the exact opposite. Do the teachers even review this stuff before they put it out there to the students?
The assignments in elementary school are too advanced, requiring powerpoint and a lot of internet knowledge so the parent ends up sitting there doing a lot of it. The middle school science projects are very involved and require a bunch of items that the average person doesn’t have around the house so you have to stop and go to the store and buy all of it before you can proceed with any of the other assignments.
My biggest problem with Liberty is that I just don’t understand why an educational institution doesn’t proofread their curriculum before giving it out to their students.
Cons: None that I can think of
Grades Used: 10th
Although I am not a mom I would like to give an honest review of LUOA. I am in 10th grade right now,16 years old, and half way through the semester. I have very bad social anxiety that was making normal school a nightmare for me even at a private school. We talked about it for a while and finnaly decided to try online. This school has helped me so much because although it is social anxiety and you should be out in public a lot, for some kids it makes it worse to forced into social situations. My anxiety has got far better and I’m sorry if I ramble on too much about that in particular but I just want people with the same problems to know. Some classes are better than others. . I am not good at math and I am trying and it will take me sometimes an hour or more to get my work done for that class. In history or English or bible though I can usually do my lesson for the day in 10 minutes. It really depends on your child and what your child is taking. The biggest thing is to make sure your child is caught up though because if you get behind in things it can be really hard to catch up on because you cannot get to the next lesson without doing the inevitable before it. The Bible class teaches great biblical things. I like this school and will do dual enrollement for the next two years. Some people have spoke of lots of typos and problems with assignment and teachers not getting back to you. I have not found any problems with these, there are typos here and there but don’t we all make mistakes. My teachers are very nice and easy to respect because they give you what you need and whenever I do need to talk to them or ask them a question I get a response back very quickly. The thing I wasn’t looking most forward to was space and non-stressful environment. I usually start my school work at 12:00 and depending on how much work I have I am usually done by 4:00 and I have all day to do whatever I want. The only thing I would say though is don’t put your kids in homeschool at a young age because they need to develop social skills and have lots of friends because then chances are they won’t end up with anxiety like me. Not saying that applies for everyone but this is just my opinion and my experiences so I hope this will help someone in the future. God bless you.
Cons: Response time and turning in assignments. Trouble transmitting assignments at time.
Grades Used: Junior
My daughter is currently enrolled in 11th grade. She took one college class over the summer. So far, we have been pleased with the curriculum. By far, better than the public school system. We just wish the classes were by weeks like the college classes. She will definitely continue with the program.
The cons are teacher responses in a timely manner, but if you notify your academic advisor, you will get immediate response.
Cons: EVerything
Grades Used: 9th
Horrible structure and useless teachers. questions are extremely specific to the point where you aren’t learning anything important, only the weird questions. Way too blah and I don’t understand why on earth anyone would pay for this useless school.
Grades Used: 8-11
Like most things … LUOA is great for some and not so great for others . We love it for our daughter , our son has done a few classes and only enjoyed the dual enrollment. I find their dual enrollment option the single best thing about the program . My daughter ( currently in 11th grade ) will graduate with a highschool diploma and a 2 year AA college degree at the same time saving us tons of money and giving her a jump on her college coursework .
Cons: price
Grades Used: 11-12
LUOA is amazing! My son has taken classes through them and really enjoyed his experience.
Please use wisdom when reading some of the reviews that attempt to discredit this wonderful academy. They seem either to be rebellious children or adults who can’t spell, which makes me wonder about the legitimacy of the comments they submit.
Cons: For me, still less cons than pros
Grades Used: 2,3, 4, and 5
Good things about Liberty: Flexible schedule, access to RightNowMedia. Bad things: Since the system is online, typing should be a priority to teach. It is not. MS Office should be a priority, or at least PowerPoint. We use that a lot. We are not allowed to know who uses Liberty, in our town. They use videos from Bill Nye (vocal anti Christian).
My biggest complaint about Liberty is the same as all “Christian” private schools; they simply copy the public school system (which has been proven a failure.) “Christianizing” a failing system is not intelligent.
I feel that Liberty has access to the best information and people, in the world, so I wish they would use this to completely re think education. There is so much more data about how to successfully teach, now!
Cons: Curriculum filled with errors, lack of timely response from teachers, turnaround time for grading
Grades Used: 8th
We decided to use LUOA this year for Pre-Algebra. After a few days my son decided he liked the independence and asked if we could add more classes. We added Academic Success, Physical Science, Civics, Basic Spanish I (followed by Basic Spanish II), and at a later date English 8.
It didn’t take long for me to regret our decision to enroll my son in LUOA. This year has been an exercise in frustration. Teachers are hard to contact, assignments take days to be graded (even though they have a 48 hour grading policy). The lessons are full of errors. (According to one of my son’s lessons, “We all know that the articles are “a, and, & the.” I could go on and on about the errors but that’s not necessary. In speaking to LUOA about the errors, I was told they are “working on it.”
Academically, I think LUOA is severely lacking. There were days when my son completed all his assignments in less than an hour and other days when Physical Science alone took him two hours. Physical Science, in my opinion, is filled with “busy work.” As far as the Pre-Algebra class, there are many assignments with only three questions, which means if a student gets one problem incorrect they receive a grade of 66%. Quizzes and exams are a little better with five questions. But again, one incorrect problem and you get an 80%.
English 8 was dropped in less than 30 days. The errors and poor teacher were too much to overcome. A change of Physical Science teachers was necessary mid-year due to incompetency on the part of the teacher. He took weeks to grade assignments, deducted points for misspelled words, though the assignments were filled with misspellings and grammatical errors. (He teaches full-time in the public school system. No wonder it took weeks for assignments to be graded.) The Basic Spanish I and II teacher was the best thing about LUOA. She encouraged my son on a daily basis and was timely in her correction of assignments. The Academic Success class was, in my opinion, a waste of time and money. The entire class seemed to be based on a Weekly Reading Log. The Civics class was worthwhile, although there wasn’t much interaction with or encouragement from the teacher.
We started the school year excited about LUOA and the idea that my son would attend LUOA for the high school years, we are ending the year counting the assignments left so we can be done with the torture. My son is a good student and is getting As in all his classes but it has not been a fun journey. Our search for an online high school continues and I give LUOA a failing grade.
Grades Used: 7
I will not re-enroll my child. First off evolution and macro/micro evolution isnt scriptural. Then they forced catholicism into the cirriculum as well. Its pricey as well. Teachers dont respond right away and if a student needs help in a subject and nobody is avail in that dept ur out of luck. my sons an excellent student. However, math is a struggle. School refuses to offer xtra credit assignments or retesting even if no teacher is available to review with a student before a test. I find this very concerning. Especially w these issues coming from a supposed christian school. Theres even more concerning ratings with the college. My kids will never attends college here for sure. It may as well be called public school.
Cons: None
Grades Used: 7th and 8th
Our son started in the 7th grade and has done very well at LUOA. We love that it is a Biblical worldview. You can work ahead and move up in level at your own pace. You test into the school and work at your own pace and you don’t have to be stuck waiting on the rest of the class. He gets one on one attention and his teachers pray for him!!!!
You can do the edge program and start college early at Liberty University. Our son plays travel basketball and this works out fantastic for his training. He is not stuck in school all day just to come home to more homework. He is finished in about 4 hours most days.
We are very blessed to have him home and learning!
I just have a few questions for highschool students. I am thinking about homeschooling with Liberty Next semester and would appreciate some help deciding.
1. How many hours should I expect to work on each subject? One of the reasons I would like to hoemschool is so that I can have more time pursuing extracuricular activities.
2. What is the difficuty level?
3. Do you regret choosing Liberty Online?
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Vivian
Cons: website can be a little slow
Grades Used: 3rd and 4th grade
Our daughter has really enjoyed the new curriculum. She is learning a lot from the videos and the teacher feedback has started to get really personal. By that I mean they are noticing negative patterns and addressing them. The teacher is also very complimentary and caring in her responses. If we did this on our own we would probably let some of this slide to the determent of our daughters learning experience. That is us being self aware not a comment about others. The website can be slow at times. Every time we have had an issue with the system or the curriculum the school has been responsive. Our daughter spends about 4.5 hours doing school (we added spanish to the other five classes through another source) We spend about 2 hours a day helping her. A good amount of work is done off of the computer (art projects, math papers etc) So you will need a good printer and scanner.
Cons: Poorly designed, inaccurate information
This is actually the worst program we have ever used, especially for the money that we are paying. I have to constantly contact the teachers to notify them of inaccurate test questions and information. The science curriculum presents evolutionary theory as factual information. I believe they pieced the entire program together just randomly gathering videos and things from off the internet. It was a lot better before they changed to writing their own curriculum. Don’t waste your money.
Cons: Grading and teacher reply
Grades Used: 10th
So I am a student, and this is my first year at LUOA. It has been a great experience but I do have a couple of things that need to be brought to attention. 1) The grading. When I finish my first attempt, it will say how many I have gotten wrong. Here comes the problem. It doesn’t tell you which question(s). So you second guess ALL of your answers. Now keep in mind that you do get to keep the highest score but this is been annoying for me since the beginning. 2) Teacher reply. Most of the teachers only reply once a day. So sometimes it will only take a day to get something sorted out, and other times it will take a WHOLE WEEK to get sorted out. These teachers most definitely need to amp up their game. Other than those 2 issues, LUOA is a all around great, accredited school that you should most definitely consider sending your child to if they ever want to be homeschooled/ online schooled.
Cons: System always crawls with every click and we have 5 MB download speed. You can't see the what was correct or incorrect on an assignment unless you complete BOTH attempts.
Grades Used: 7th grade math, 8th grade for Bible, Civics, English, and Physical Science
We’ve been enrolled for 3 weeks and we’re withdrawing today. I thought the content for Physical Science was a joke.It first talks about “How to be Successful at LUOA” (this should be in the orientation, not the science class), then “Using MLA in Writing” (we had to do the same thing a week later in the English class) “Worldview and the Scientific Method”, then a quiz, week 2 started with “Introduction to a Science Fair”, “The Why and What of the Metric System” (content for this topic was abysmal)… So far, all the science course has gone over is glossing over metric conversions (you obviously need prior knowledge, or you have to go look up how to do it in order to complete the homework). Most of the video selections we’ve seen so far were obnoxious, and the questions that the student answers at the end of each assignment were either ambiguous, or off topic.
Math was good, Civics wasn’t bad, English had a few issues: the assignment would teach you a part of speech and use very simple sentences, but when it came time to answer questions, the sentences were more complicated and then the student had to write a paragraph using the part of speech just taught! That was a real challenge. I emailed the teacher and she was accommodating.
I was really hoping that LUOA would work out, but I found myself spending more time with my son get through the assignments than I did creating my own curriculum.
Grades Used: 3rd and 6th
I absolutely love the Liberty Academy. My girls used it last year and I found it just incredible. Yes it is online but there is not cost for books and supplies. The projects utilized products and things we already had in our home. The school day didn’t usually pass 3 hours and for my 3rd grader it was often less. The teachers are just wonderful. There is no lesson planning on my part. I work at home and this was a perfect fit for our lives. I cannot think of a more perfect situation for homeschooling. In a time when computers are so much a part of our lives this just adds to the future for them. While a little expensive overall it is a wonderful program and I cannot say enough about it. We were able to add so much to our lives and give them the best education in the world by utilizing Liberty Academy. The things being taught today in schools is not good for our children and I never had to worry or question what was being taught. Definitely worth the money and time.
Cons: nothing
Grades Used: 4th and 6th
I signed my 6th grader up and had planned to send my 4th grader to public school this fall. After my 6th grader got started my 4th grader insisted that he wanted to “do it too”. My 6th gragder is a gifted student and both enjoy the self-paced aspect and the content. Both have expressed that they feel that they are learning more. My straight A students are now A & B students. I am fine with that as long as they are putting forth their best efforts. We have also given consideration that they are new to online schooling. My oldest is son is an adult learner. I feel this program will help my youngest son develope his own learning style to his fullest potential. I cannot imagine getting more bang for your buck with LUOA’s early regestration discount of $500.00. That comes to under $2000.00/year. I dream of offering this program to less fortunate communities through local churches. Blessings, Tamara