The DODO Story
The #1 Directory of Online Dual-enrollment Options
Hi there.
I'm Marian Harris, founder of DODO.
I started DODO in 2019.
I think.
(I wasn't planning on starting a website, so I didn't actually mark the day on my calendar.)
An innocent start... into the great dismal swamp of dual-enrollment research. No warning flags at all.
It was the day I finally drilled far enough down my to-do list to reach "‘Find kiddo #5 some good online dual enrollment courses."
I thought this would be a quick win.
Surely it’s easy to find online courses online, yes?
I blocked out a couple hours, max, for the project.
Online? Why Online Dual Enrollment?
Oh yup, fair question:
Why online dual enrollment?
Most people, I have discovered, choose online dual-enrollment ....
to save time (no drive to a college campus)
to save money (no car or bus costs)
to be able to study in their pajamas or lounging in their tree house.
to access courses from prestigious colleges and universities
to access courses that aren't offered at their high school
to access courses that will impress job and internship recruiters
to avoid study disruptions (like Covid-19)
and so on.
But my primary motivation was convenience.
Kiddo #5 had a part-time job she loved, that was giving her valuable work experience on top of her high school study...
And attending on-campus dual enrollment classes was never going to fit around her job schedule.
So online dual-enrollment was the answer.
Online dual enrollment turns out to be... more complicated than I expected
To my surprise...
It wasn’t easy to find quality online dual enrollment information in search engines.
It WAS easy to find advice pages and top-10 type sites promising to list online dual-enrollment options.
But after digging through them, it turned out that the programs on these sites weren't all online!
You would think this bit of info would be front and center, but no, for some programs it took 15+ minutes of digging into their website to clarify yes/no this program was only offered on campus!
The hours began adding up.
And then there was the accreditation mystery
More schools than I expected turned out to be NOT accredited.
Um, let me clarify that.
They are ALL accredited. By some group, somewhere.
And they all proclaim this loudly. "We are accredited."
But they aren't all Regionally Accredited, which is the best, top, premier, ultimate accreditation in the US. The one you want.
So I found myself looking up the various regional accrediting agencies and searching their registers to see if each of the college dual-enrollment programs I'd found was actually Regionally Accredited.
This was important to me because I wanted my child's dual enrollment to transfer easily to other universities.
Over and over, just when I thought I'd found a great DE program, it turned out not to be regionally accredited.
But that was nothing compared to the "We only take in-state dual-enrollment students" Ultra-Classified Secret.
Many college's dual-enrollment sites never did inform the reader (me) whether they accepted students outside the college's home state.
This matters to anyone who is looking for a bigger range of dual-enrollment options than they can find in their own home state.
But it mattered even more to me, because I didn't live in ANY U.S. state.
I'm a U.S. expat.
Originally from Illinois (and Texas) (and Ohio) ( and Indiana) (and Colorado),
but for 20 years we've been...
living in New Zealand.
So a university in XYZ state that only accepts dual-enrollment students living in XYZ state was out of the question for us.
It often took 15 or 20 minutes scoping through fine print in handbooks or application forms to realize, No, this school really isn't going to share this little bit of information on their dual-enrollment website.
So that meant a round or two of emails with the dual-enrollment program administrators
-- to nail down yes or no, they do or don't accept out-of-state students.
Very often, they didn't.
And then, the "Do We Accept Home School Students?" Conundrum
Many schools' sites never mentioned whether their dual-enrollment program accepted home school students.
And we were doing home school.
So that meant a round or two of emails and/or phone calls to figure out absolutely, positively, Yes or No, they do or don't accept homeschool students.
So, are we wasting time yet?
To be honest, a lot of people thought I was wasting time.
But I was determined to get the info I wanted and not miss any great dual enrollment programs that my daughter could really benefit from.
It was a bit insane, I admit.
But there's more...
When I got down to the nitty gritty of the remaining schools that WERE 100% ONLINE, and AVAILABLE NATIONWIDE, I ran into more problems:
Admissions rules that my kid didn't fit.
Hidden costs, usually in the form of semester fees or per-course 'technology' fees.
Not to mention course lengths that weren't workable or weren't even stated.
(A few schools announced their course calendar clearly on their home page. But most colleges' timelines were completely indecipherable without a term of indentured service in their Course Schedule interface.)
Aaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Never, ever, ever give up.
Days and months went by, while I continued to soldier through the Google results' endless fine print.
The rest of the family began to view me as something of a nut. Why was I spending so much time on this!
Well, the reason was...
Unbelievable, incredible, stellar dual enrollment options... hurrah!
Every once in a while, I'd come across a gem.
A school with dual-enrollment options so awesome, I pretty much danced up to my daughter's room to show her!
So I kept looking...
There might be more!!!
And over and over again, I'd get to page 10 or 20 of search results...
And stumble across an amazing, unique, incredible, affordable and truly 100% online dual-enrollment program.
These were programs that I’d never heard of before.
Programs, in fact, that nobody I knew seemed to have heard of.
This lasted about a year.
And then...
I paused, and took a good hard look at what I'd found.
It was incredible.
I kept thinking, Man, I wish I had had choices like this when I was in high school.
I showed it all to my husband and he had the same reaction.
Wow.
What an unbelievable range of courses for a high school student!
The Teenager Has Her Say
About this time, I sat down with kiddo #5 and asked what she wanted to do about it..
She surprised me...
And picked courses I never realized she'd be interested in!
In all, she picked out six dual-enrollment courses (from both high-profile and niche institutions) and worked away at them over about 12 months
– with a previously unseen level of motivation (yay!!!)
and ended up with a rather decent dual-enrollment GPA
(if I say so myself!)
And then, after finishing high school, she applied to universities, and this happened...
What impressed me the most, was...
When she eventually applied to several universities for regular undergrad study,
and she was accepted by three of them solely on the basis of her dual-enrollment courses!
Without submitting any high-school transcript whatsoever!!!
(None of these universities,
by the way,
were ones where she had done dual-enrollment.)
"Let's make an online dual-enrollment information website!" they said. "It'll be easy!" they said.
At this point, I thought other parents and high-schoolers might like to see the amazing online dual enrollment options out there.
And have a quick, simple way to find the most exciting online dual-enrollment courses -- that fit their career goals and their budget --
(Without killing a whole year on the project!)
So I decided to (and I quote) put up a "quick little website."
Well...
It wasn’t quick.
And it turned out to be about 100 charts bigger than I ever intended.
With more information pages
And more search, sort and filter tools than I ever envisioned.
More overkill (you might say 🙂 )
But it helps lots of people.
So it makes me happy :).
And that's the story behind DODO
If you're a dual-enrollment student
or parent
or advisor,
I hope it helps you.
And if you have a suggestion for making it better,
I hope you'll drop me a line.
I'd love to hear from you.
Marian
Copyright © 2018-2026 JHI.Holdings.Ltd