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Current View
Best Practices for NCAA-Eligible
Courses
Credit Recovery vs. Initial Credit
Although you may offer them at your schools, credit-recovery courses are not NCAA-eligible. Therefore, students
seeking to recover credits must take the same course, in its entirety, as students earning initial credit.
Length, Content, and Rigor
Imagine Edgenuity® courses are equivalent to face-to-face
courses in length, content, and rigor. Core courses in
English language arts, mathematics, science, social
studies, and world languages have been reviewed
and approved by the NCAA as meeting its
definition of a “core course.” In addition,
both Intro to Philosophy and World
Religions have been approved for
use with Instructional Services.
While you can remove lessons
and activities from Imagine
Edgenuity courses, they must
maintain equivalence in length,
content, and rigor to a
face-to-face course.
This document is meant to describe best practices in Imagine
Edgenuity implementations. This is not an NCAA publication.
Please refer to the NCAA Eligibility Center website for specific
information about nontraditional core-course requirements.COURSEWARE
Customizations Likely to Be
Approved by the NCAA
If you teach from Reconstruction to the present in
your face-to-face U.S. history course, it would be
acceptable to customize content from before the
Reconstruction out of your online course.
If you cover some content offline in teacher-led
activities, it would be acceptable to customize
those topics out of your online course.
● If you do not do certain activities (e.g., projects,
performance tasks) in your offline course, it would
be acceptable to customize those activities out of
your online course.
Customizations Not Likely to
Be Approved by the NCAA
Removing essays and other extended writing
activities from an English language arts course.
Students are expected to produce extended writing
pieces in all college-preparatory ELA courses.
Removing content from your online course if that
content is covered in an equivalent face-to-face
course (unless the teacher covers that content
offline via a blended learning model).
Pretesting and Prescriptive Testing Not Allowed
By default, all initial-credit Imagine Edgenuity courses have pretesting and prescriptive testing turned off. These
features will not be approved by the NCAA.
Pretesting: This setting allows students to take a 10-question quiz at the start of each lesson. If students meet
the pretest’s passing threshold they place out of that lesson. This setting is recommended for credit recovery
only, not for initial credit.
Prescriptive testing: When enabled, this setting provides students with a comprehensive test at the start of
the course, with one question for each lesson. If students answer the question associated with a given lesson
correctly, that lesson is automatically customized out of the course. This setting is not recommended for either
credit recovery or initial credit.
Please note that the NCAA does not approve implementations in which pretesting and prescriptive testing are
enabled for some students taking initial-credit courses but not for student athletes. The implementation design
must be the same for all students.
WHY IS THIS GUIDELINE IMPORTANT?
Online and blended learning should give students access to the same high-quality learning experience
they would have in a traditional classroom. Online learning is not an easier way to complete coursework.
WHY IS THIS GUIDELINE IMPORTANT?
If students are allowed to test out of content, the NCAA cannot be assured that a student’s grade accurately
represents the work they did in an online course. Keeping pretesting and prescriptive testing turned off
ensures that students who complete an Imagine Edgenuity course have truly earned the grade they were
awarded and have demonstrated the ability to do college-preparatory work, in addition to mastering content.
Robust Instructional Teacher Role
In NCAA-eligible courses, a subject-qualified teacher must have regular instructional interaction with students.
Although the implementation model may vary widely from school to school, teachers must act instructors, not
tutors. In addition, teachers must proactively interact with all students, not just students struggling with content.
For example, a “help desk” model in which teachers are available to students who seek assistance would not
meet NCAA guidelines.
The following sample models may be successful, but please note that these are suggestions provided by
Imagine Edgenuity and are not preapproved by the NCAA:
● Students work online in a computer lab supervised by a non-subject area teacher. Each day of the week,
Monday through Thursday, a subject area teacher comes in to work with students in those courses. For
example, on Mondays, a math teacher comes in to work with math students, on Tuesdays, an ELA teacher
comes in, Wednesdays a science teacher, and Thursdays a social studies teacher. Finally, on Fridays, all four
teachers are in the lab for tutoring — they group students together based on the mastery data they pull from
Imagine Edgenuity.
A single science teacher works with students taking biology and chemistry in a blended learning environment.
She sets up a rotation, in which students taking biology are online in Imagine Edgenuity for the first half of the
class period and students taking chemistry in a group with her discussing what they learned online. Then, she
flips the groups halfway through the class period. (This could also be done by flipping every other day, such that
half the class is online on Monday, and the other half works with the teacher. Then on Tuesday, the groups flip.)
● A humanities teacher — subject-certified in ELA and social studies — supervises a computer lab of students
working on English and history courses. She runs her lab in a “flex” model, pulling flexible groups of students
together for face-to-face instruction each day based on areas of common need or strength. She tracks which
students she works with each day, ensuring that she works face-to-face with all students at least once a week.
WHY IS THIS GUIDELINE IMPORTANT?
No matter how robust, curriculum alone is not sufficient to provide a college-preparatory experience.
Students need instructional interaction with a qualified teacher to engage them in discussion, challenge
them to think critically about what they learn, review their written work, and reteach concepts and skills
as needed.
Calendar Length
Online courses must be time-bound, meaning there must be a stated minimum and maximum amount of time
for students to complete the course. For example, if your policy is that students have 14 to 18 weeks to complete
a one-semester online course, students should not be permitted to complete the course in a month. Note that
this guideline is independent of state seat-time requirements and refers only to the calendar length of the course.
Transcript Identifier
As part of NCAA eligibility, schools must agree to label online courses on student transcripts with a recognizable
code. For example, if Algebra I is labeled on student transcripts as “ALG I,” the online equivalent might be labeled
as “ALG I OL,” or some other indicator.
Learn more at imaginelearning.com/imagine-edgenuity
WHY IS THIS GUIDELINE IMPORTANT?
The NCAA wants to ensure students do not complete courses in academically unsound time frames.
Remember that students in an online course should regularly interact with a subject-qualified teacher.
Consider an implementation in which students meet with a teacher in a class setting with peers once a
week; a student who completed this online coursework in only 4 weeks would have only 4 class sessions
instead of 16.
WHY IS THIS GUIDELINE IMPORTANT?
When a student-athlete receives a scholarship, the NCAA sometimes requests score reports at the activity
level for any online courses. The transcript code allows the NCAA to identify which courses were taken
online, so they know to request the documentation.
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