She will have many DE classes, including other classes from the same school as this PE class. I can certainly include it as .25 credit. What would you do about a grade? Keep it pass/fail and not include it in the GPA?

We are mulling DE choices for next fall. Dd would very much like to take a PE class. Specifically self defense for women. I am all for this! The DE offering is the only viable way for dd to take a class like this locally. But based on other threads in this forum, I am concerned about how to include this on her high school transcript. I would prefer to not list it for the following reasons: 1. She has plenty of PE credits. 2. The course is only 0.5 semester college credits and has 30 contact hours making it difficult for me to assign the correct amount of credit. 3. The course is graded pass/fail, which again makes it difficult for me to assign the correct grade. But I have been cautioned that having anything on a DE transcript that does not also appear on her high school transcript could be a flag during admissions. Anyone run across something like this or have any advise?

I'd think it would be a problem on the other end too. I would assume some juniors and seniors have significant others who are under 16. Dd went to prom last year with her boyfriend, who was a senior. She was 15. According to these rules, she would not have been allowed?

I've been using a cooler for years. I don't have the kitchen space for any more gadgets and our picnic cooler, which already had, is the perfect size.

Also, WTMA (non-AP) is on our list of potentials. Anyone have a review?

Dd will need a credit of US History for her 12th grade year. I had planned for her take this as a DE class, but our options are not as I had hoped. So now I am looking for either a fairly independent home curriculum or an online class. Online is preferred. Anyone have anything they love? These are the things we are looking for: 1. No busy work. Dd is not interested in doing word searches, games, art, projects that don't involve furthering her understanding of historical events, etc..... 2. Related to #1, gets to the point. We are not looking for a get-it-done course but dd is going to be over-scheduled next year. This is a concern I have about online classes in general. If class time and videos take up more than 5 hours per week with lots of additional reading, studying, and assignment work, it will be too much. Dd reads deeply so she does not need the same content covered in reading and lecture but would rather see non-reading content be discussion and analysis of the content. 3. Engaging. I had a great US History teacher in high school. He just knew how to make any topic interesting. This would be a nice bonus. 4. Does not rely heavily on memorization. While knowing your basic dates, names, and places is handy, we are not interested in a class that is assessed heavily on memorizing a bunch of facts that will spill out of her head after the semester ends. This is one reason why we wanted DE class. Lastly, I would be interested in hearing any get-it-done options as well. Dd's list of things she'd like to take next year is long. If we cannot find a good match that meets my criteria above, we might consider something simple and easy. She covered US History deeply in the 8th grade and will likely be taking it again within the first two years of college so, I am not 100% opposed to considering simpler options if push comes to shove.

Thanks for updating!

Another update! Dd's emails have still gone unanswered and I still have not had my call (now calls and email) returned. But, the instructor posted an announcement late Friday night stating that he forgot to flip some sort of toggle in the teaching platform which is why weeks worth of assignments never showed up. He did not explain any further but now there are readings and assignments posted for weeks 2 and 3. They are all past due and will no longer allow students to submit. There is nothing in the announcement about if or how the students are to make these up. Dd scrambled all weekend to make up the work but cannot submit any of it. In a separate announcement posted on Saturday, the instructor said it had come to his attention that he forgot to post the syllabus. He said a syllabus will be posted by the end of this week. Seems to me that if he just "forgot" to post it, it should not take a full week to get it posted. Lastly, one assignment that she can still turn in (due tomorrow by noon) is a "Semester Research Paper Topic." That is the whole assignment. No information of length, depth, scope, due date of actual paper, what it will be worth, or even what is expected to be turned in for the topic. I feel so bad for dd. This has been a terrible first-DE experience. Luckily her other classes are going well.

Thanks all. Being our first DE experience, I really haven't thought much of this through. Lots of lessons learned. We know of no other homeschooled high school students in our area. The few we did know all enrolled in school by 9th grade if not sooner. All of dd's friends are in public school and most have STEMmy university-related parents so the bar is pretty high. Homeschooling is not looked upon favorably by the faculty at my university so I feel the need to overcompensate in many ways. I am probably overly-cautious about accountability and fairness in grading. I knew we would have to send all transcripts but did not know that meant all classes would have to be accounted for on her homeschool transcript. There is an update. While scouring the teaching platform AGAIN this morning as we wanted to be SURE nothing was assigned for this entire week, we found there was quite a bit of activity in one of the discussion board threads that had already been due and "graded." Another student asked if anyone else knew why almost nothing had been assigned and where the heck (different word used here) to find the syllabus. There have been several replies with everyone as perplexed as we are. Others have emailed the instructor with no response. We have taken screen shots of all of this just in case we need "evidence." So, at least we know that if we have missed something, we are not the only ones. VP of Student Services has not returned my call yet.

Oh my word! It certainly is hard to do the right thing here and NOT inflate her GPA and credits with a course that required practically no effort....in theory anyway, since we don't know yet what the rest of this course will end up entailing. I may be eating my words here if she gets slapped with some huge exam with zero direction on what material was to be covered. In my digging for policy, I did find something in the student handbook that says all courses will have at least two exams unless stated otherwise in writing during the first week of class. So theoretically, dd should be taking two exams in this course.

Good idea. I will discuss with the VP of Academic Services or whoever I end up talking to.

Thanks everyone. I have left a message with the VP of Academic Services after the president's admin told me that would be the best place to start. She also warned me that it may be a while before that person gets back to me as she is very over-extended. This is a very very VERY small CC so there seems to be no clear hierarchy in departments....or evidence that there are departments, just an instructor or two listed in the directory for each teaching category, nor are there any deans. Most of their class offerings are online since the population the CC serves is very large geographically making live classes impossible to attend for most of the population. I have actually been approached by this CC to teach in the past. They offered me a job, with no interview or resume, to teach a subject that I did take in college (25 years ago) but barely passed. It was a week after the semester started. They were extremely desperate. I declined, obviously, but even if I had been qualified and interested, they offered me less than 1/4 what I was being paid at the university for the same number of credits. So, I knew there was a good chance this would not be a good experience for dd. Sigh. Lesson very much learned. I didn't think of trying to find this instructor at other schools. I know he is not part of the faculty at my university as my current job involves working closely with our faculty, including adjuncts. There is another very small university in our region that I can check out. Most likely, if he is teaching anywhere, he is probably at a high school as many of the instructors at this CC are high school teachers as well. If that's the case, there are probably 20+ tiny rural schools I'd have to search through to try to find him. I will think on the credit issue. It's not that I expect this class to match the rigor of her university classes.....I'd be happy if it matched the rigor of her middle school history expectations at this point! Another option would be to just leave it off her HS transcript altogether. She will have FAR more SS credits than needed without it. She is only taking it because she (and I) wanted one more swipe through 1400+ world history, even if much abbreviated. She will still get college transfer credit for it if she attends the school in which she is currently considering as her top choice. They, frighteningly, have a transfer agreement for many classes, including this one. We would for sure drop this class if it would not result in an F on her transcript. This is a bit of a snowball of errors......not just biting the bullet and putting together a world history class on my own, me not understanding the DE vs guest student status, registering dd for a class at a school I knew to have a high probability of trouble, ignoring my instincts when I saw the textbook for the first time, etc.... It is Thursday of week three.....1/5 of the way through the semester (including final exam week). There are no assignments or reading listed for this week so far. In fact, no communications or activity on the teaching platform at all this week. In three weeks, they have read one 12-page chapter (with pictures!) and discussed their opinions on why history is important on a discussion board. I am appalled.

Yes! This is the issue! What do others think here? Contact someone now or wait it out a bit longer? And who to contact first if there are no department chairs or and dd does not have an academic advisor?

Yes! It is also a rule at the university dd also attends (and that I used to teach at) that a syllabus be provided by the first day of class, although assignment and due date info is not required and rarely included. The required components are grade scale, contact information, textbook/materials requirements, attendance policies, how the course will be assessed, learning outcomes, links to university policies (including, ironically, the policy on providing a syllabus), late assignment policies, office hours, etc..... I cannot find any rules like this in the CC student handbook, catalog, or website. So there may be no such policies. The closest I found is that instructors are required to provide attendance policies in writing during the first week of class.....which this instructor did not....but being an online class, I'm not sure how that rule could be applicable anyway. I also cannot find any requirement that instructors respond to student communication....so I suppose there is no ground to stand on here?

This is the only class she is currently taking from this institution and we will for sure not be registering for any more! It was actually never my plan to have her take any classes there but we tried this one because the equivilent course at the university she is attending was full. So giving it a half credit WITH supplementation is about as far as I am willing to go. I have already identified and started an additional home-supervised half credit social science class to replace the half credit I will not be granting for this. If the rigor of the class eventually picks up to something even remotely resembling a college class, I may reconsider. There is no rumor. That was just an example. We know nobody in this class so there is nowhere to get a rumor. It's more that dd's approach to the class, and how I would supplement it, would change significantly if we knew it would be weighted heavily toward exam assessment. If not, she would just continue to enter the Micky Mouse discussion posts, read the chapters that are assigned, and spent the rest of her effort on whatever I ask her to do which may or may not follow the content and time periods that the class is following. "May not" is more likely since we have no direction of what, when, or how content will be covered.

Thanks Lori. I was a former academic advisor so this is one area I usually can figure out. As you said, yes, the first week is the official add/drop period where students have no designation on their transcript and get a partial refund if they drop. They have until the end of 4th week to drop with a "W" and no refund. However, this option is not available to DE students at this school. Her university also has special rules for DE-only students. I believe, but cannot be sure, that this has to do with state funding for DE through the public schools. I have since learned that since dd is homeschooled and ineligible for funding, we could have registered her as a guest student instead which would have meant the DE drop restrictions would not apply to dd. This is how we will register her in the future. But we did not know this when registering for these classes.

The instructor emailed the class list during the first week with the textbook information and a message about how they would not be doing much during the first week due to add/drop possibilities. That is the same email address that is listed on the course platform and is what dd has used. She sent both attempts from the her email address that is provided by that school but also sent a duplicate of the second email from her regular email address as well, just in case something wasn't right with it. She BCC'd me and I received all three. All that said there is a remote possibility that he never received them or they went to spam. But given that there is no phone number or office and the "contact me" link on the platform just generates an email to the same address, I'm not sure how else to attempt to contact him.

Only entries for the discussion board posts that were already assigned and graded. I know when I taught, my platform grade book had the option to show what various components were worth (e.g. 50% exams, 20% homework, 30% semester project) but there is nothing like that on hers....which either means the platform doesn't support it or the instructor did not enter that data.

There are no office hours or physical office. No phone number either. These are the kinds of things that would be on a syllabus! The CC faculty/staff directory does not list this instructor. I am not at all surprised as this CC only has a handful of traditional faculty. Most are part-time adjuncts on a contract basis who likely never set foot on the physical campus....may not even know where it is! I have learned several disturbing things about this school while trying to figure out what to do about this class.

Ugh! It is disheartening to know this is common. While it is not what I would complain about, I am certainly flabbergasted at the lack of effort this "4 credit" college class is demanding. The effort she has spent for this class so far for this entire semester is less that what is expected of her for a single DAY in her live university freshman-level classes. The textbook is high school level, if not middle school, IMO. I have already decided that I cannot ethically record this as a full credit on dd's transcript as I would for any other 4 credit college class. If the class continues this way, I even feel unethical giving her a half credit unless I supplement. I paid for this course because I do not have the bandwidth to cover the content myself right now so I am mad mad MAD. Lesson learned, dd will not be taking any more courses from this institution.

Thanks for the feedback. That is what I am looking for, opinions on whether there is something to complain about. Just to clarify a few things: 1. I have gone though the class platform myself, with a fine tooth comb. Three times actually. 2. I do not expect a list of future assignments. Getting them assigned as they are is not the problem. The problem is not having any idea what the course grade will be based on. What I expect from a syllabus is basic info like what percentage of the grade comes from exams vs homework vs class participation and what the grading scale is. As in, dd does not want to find out the last week of class that her grade will be 80% based on a final exam she had no idea was coming. Even topics/chapters covered would be more than I would be looking for. 3. We are already past the withdrawal period. 4. My complaint would be that the instructor does not respond to emails and that there is no information available about what the student will be assessed on. The fact that my dd has learned nothing from this class so far aside from a chapter she could have just read on her own is irritating but not what my complaint is about.

DD is 16 and is taking her first DE classes this semester. She has three, two live at our local university and one online at our regional CC. The live classes are going great and she has handled everything about them by herself. The online class, not so much. It is a World History class which I was already disappointed about her taking. After 10 years, we had the step off the third 4-year TWTM cycle for history this year for reasons I won't bother to go into. The result was that I still wanted her to take the third and final swipe through 1400+ World History, even if it was reduced to a single semester and not done the way we do have done it at home. This was the best solution we could come up with. It is halfway through week 3. So far, the only assigned work for the class has been to read one chapter of the textbook, post four original discussion board posts, and eight responses to others. The prompt for the discussion posts have been nebulous things like, "why do you think history is important?" or "How does studying history help you make decisions in your current life?" Nothing that has anything to do with the scant content they were to read. Her entries have been graded and she got 100% on all of them with no feedback other than score. This is a 4 credit course. There is no syllabus and no indication on the learning platform of what the expectations are for the semester, if there will be exams/projects, no rubrics. Nothing. The only contact for the teacher is an email address. DD sent an email during the first week inquiring about a syllabus. This went unanswered. She sent another one this past Monday again asking where to find the syllabus and asking more detailed questions about if there will be exams or projects. Again, no answer. There is no general posting space on the discussion board, only the four prompts, so no good way to query other students to see if they know something she doesn't. The region this CC covers is very rural and large, covering an area that is roughly the size of Vermont. Dd does not know any of the other students personally. I have scoured the site and teaching platform to see if she is missing anything. I taught university classes for 13 years and we have dealt with countless different platforms between that and all the online classes dd has taken. While this one is admittedly the clunkiest we have ever encountered (which is saying A LOT), I am confident we have not left any stone unturned. I am generally of the opinion that dd should handle her own classes as though she were a regular college student. However, she is reluctant to go to someone at the college to complain. She is afraid the teacher will retaliate. Even if her name is left off a complaint, her emails asking about the same information is sure to identify her as the complainant. She also does not really have the words to explain the issue. Words like, "do you have an institution-wide policy for providing a syllabus for each class?" While dd is happy this class is taking up almost none of her time, she and I are both distressed that she is not getting a single thing out of a class that was not cheap. And, she still wants to take another walk through this period of history. Do I, as a parent, go up the chain of command at the CC against dd's wishes? And if so, what is the first stop? This is a very small CC so there are no department chairs. My options are VP of Academic Services or VP of Student Services. Or is it too early? Do I wait a bit?

I sent an email to say "I'm in" to the provided address. We'll see if anything comes of it. At the very least, we may hear updates on the news since we have it on most mornings. Dd loves Marketplace and recently asked when she would be learning more to understand some of the topics addressed so this is a big win-win for us.

We listen to NPR for the morning news and Marketplace had a story on a free online economics textbook. Apparently there is going to be a group study-a-long. My dd is interested so we are going to give it a try. I thought I'd share: https://www.marketplace.org/2020/01/28/together-lets-get-some-econ-extra-credit/

I do have this and have read through it twice now. I think you may have suggested it in one of my other posts some time ago. Honestly, it scares the crap out of me. This whole situation has made my life into an anxiety nightmare so it is easy to push me over the edge these days. I do think it is a good reference but not something I can handle on most days right now. I am trying to tackle one thing at a time so knowing about or thinking about all the possible things that are coming is just too overwhelming right now. Not very mature of me but it is what it is. I found the same on the Alzheimer's Association site....not much activity. But for sure some good info.