Oak Hills High School students are presented with the opportunity to participate in 14 different College Credit Plus (CCP) courses. Oak Hills High School works with both the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati State to provide high school students with the ability to take courses that can add college credit to their transcripts. It is an option for students to choose to enroll in online courses through both universities with which Oak Hills is partnered. The instructional methods within online courses are efficient in teaching students who are enrolled.
To pass a CCP class online or in-person, according to the Cincinnati State grading policies, a “C” or above is required for the final grade (Grading Policies, 2025). Thus, students must be aware of the different teaching methods that occur in an online environment. Reports from CCP students and teachers discussed the results on whether instructional content given by the university is efficiently helping students comprehend the material.
Juniors and Seniors should take advantage of free college courses. The credits received from CCP courses can save money on college tuition due to prerequisite courses getting taken care of. This is possible as long as the course is passed. However, repetitive lesson plans and assignments did not aid in comprehending the material, said senior Addison Childs, a CCP student taking online courses. Childs having a difficult time comprehending the material is one student with a bad outcome, but still maintaining the ability to pass the course. On the other hand, senior Clayton Wiegele, another CCP student enrolled in an online Statistics course, discussed how video lectures and practice assignments helped him to understand the content. Assignments are shown to vary based on the subject of the course, thus impacting the way in which a student comprehends the material.
For instance, a study conducted during COVID received feedback on the organization of online courses. Out of the respondents 24% deemed that the online classes were well organized, while 64.4% stated that learning was greater effective in physical classrooms (Kumari et al., 2021, p. 20). In-person learning is taken advantage of by students. Learning material in an environment in which the opportunity to ask questions and get immediate responses and in advantage that online participants do not receive. A smaller learning environment provides more organized structure and showed improvements in the comprehension of students who participated.
On the contrary, students who can adapt to different learning environments full of different teaching methods, then that skill can be carried into a college campus. Due to the freedom to take college courses in high school, the workload from each course can prepare students to make decisions at universities, said Michael Seiler, teaching three different math CCP classes at Oak Hills High School.
Ultimately, students should participate in dual enrollment courses both online and in-person to receive pre-requisite credit for college. Students need to go forward in their education and take advantage of the resources that Oak Hills gives them. Just like Childs, Wiegele, and Lint, other CCP students who choose to take online courses need to adapt to teaching methods that make it difficult to comprehend. Therefore, the openness to new learning environments can decrease the number of students who report that the material is challenging to grasp.
