These credits are NCCRS credits with limits on their transferability. Still, if your teen is turning or is already 18, these freebies are worth knowing about.
NCCRS (The National College Credit Recommendation Service) is a third party credit evaluator that evaluates all types of learning that happens outside of a college. A company may market and sell courses “for college credit” that have been evaluated by NCCRS. While there are almost 1,500 colleges that “may consider” NCCRS credit, only when a company has a formal written partnership with a college should this credit be considered transferable. Unlike ACE/Credly, there is no NCCRS transcript or holding place to set your credit, so if a company goes out of business before you need the credit, it may be lost. Advice for using NCCRS is to only do so when your teen will pursue a degree with a partner college (see the HS4CC list) because most colleges do NOT accept NCCRS credit. HS4CC List of NCCRS Partners
Currently, these classes are for ages 18+ only
Online Degree courses are completely free. If you would like to attempt college credit, you must first complete the course (you can’t skip any sections) can then you’ll have the option of paying $9 for online proctoring via webcam.
This company launched in 2018 and I’ve asked many times about opening the courses to those under age 18 (Technically you could *take* the course, but it wouldn’t be worth college credit) but so far they remained closed to minors. Many of their courses are based on the course content from The Great Courses.
The format: create a free online account (each person must have an account). You’ll add free courses to your account, and begin when ready. When you launch your course, you’ll be prompted to watch the main lecture (about 30 minutes) and then a few shorter activities or videos (usually less than 20 minutes). Upon completion of that unit’s activities, you’ll take the unit quiz, which closes out the unit. You must complete every unit before accessing the final exam.
Jennifer’s comments: If you have a student who does better with small chunks of learning instead of trying to study for one large exam (CLEP, AP, etc.) then you should consider this format. Since the quizzes are based on the lectures of each unit, my teens have had no trouble at all scoring well on the quizzes. It’s worth noting that while there isn’t a lockdown browser to prevent you from googling answers during a quiz, I have found that the answers aren’t really searchable in a traditional sense, they are tightly linked to the videos. An example question may be something like this “which car company was used as an example of targeted marketing?”
Check the transfer chart to see if these courses transfer into your college
Current Catalog
onlinedegree.com 08/22/2022
