I'm intrigued by the many courses offered by FEMA. I've also seen a lot of "courses" On-line from other places that amount to: 1) read passage, 2) complete multiple-choice, 3) read passage, 4) complete multiple-choice ... (30 minutes later) print certificate. That's not what I'm looking for. Are these FEMA courses generally more rigorous? Are you given a downloadable textbook? Did you feel like you were learning a lot of useful material or did most of it feel most of the material was obvious?
From my experience, it depends on the FEMA course. I have taken almost every one of the Independent Study courses and have found a wide range of difficulty levels. For example, Community Hurricane Preparedness is a difficult course which requires a good deal effort, but there are others that a person could log into cold and pass the examination. The best indicator of difficulty in my view is to look at the course list and find the ones with the higher CEU hours and higher college credit equivalencies - those are going to be your more difficult courses.
