Decide if the course is a full year or one semester. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, a high school course receives one credit for a full year course or one half credit for a semester long course if the course is offered by a major textbook publisher or online school. Major publishers include McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Common Sense Press, Alpha Omega, and A Beka. Major online schools would include Calvert, Keystone, K12, and Oak Meadow.
Log all hours spent working on the course. Hours include research, assignments, time spent learning the material and in online classes. Write these hours down in a notebook. Keep a list of each course and the amount of time spent daily in each class. One hundred twenty hours are equal to one full credit. Sixty hours are equal to half a credit. This averages out to 3.75 hours per week if your homeschool maintains a traditional public school calendar of 32 weeks of instruction per year (120 hours divided by 32 weeks). Logging hours will show colleges how much time was actually spent. This also protects you if your homeschool is questioned by local authorities.
Calculate credits earned in college courses by students who are dual enrolled in high school and college as follows: allocate one full high school credit for every three college credits. One semester of a course taken at an accredited local or online college or university equals one full high school credit. A grade of 2.0 or a letter grade of a C is required in order to receive credit for the college course.
Calculating Advanced Placement (AP) credits are slightly different than other courses. An AP credit is the equivalent of completing one college level course. According to the College Board (publisher of the AP exam), in order to receive AP credit from the College Board a student must take and pass the AP end of course exam. A fee is paid to take the exam and it is usually given at a specified time and place determined by the College Board. If the exam is not taken, or a passing grade is not achieved then one standard high school credit is given if the student passes the course.