From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Advanced Placement Courses Offered Online (NY Times on th
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 08:27:52 -0500
April 28, 1999
By PAMELA MENDELS
Advanced Placement Courses Offered Online
Like 54,000 other high school students, Elizabeth J. Hanson plans to
test her grasp of everything from the Federalist Papers to theories of
bureaucracy when she takes the Advanced Placement examination in U.S.
government and politics May 18.
Unlike most of them, however, she will have prepared for the rigorous
test, which can help high-scorers get college credit, largely by sitting
in front of a computer connected to the Internet.
Hanson, a senior at Charlotte Catholic High School in North Carolina, is
one of a pioneer group of 150 students who enrolled this semester in an
Advanced Placement course offered on the Web by APEX Online Learning
Inc.(
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/04/cyber/education/28education.ht
ml#1 ), a new company whose executives are convinced there is a market
for Advanced Placement classes online.
Although she has had to contend with computer glitches and a daunting
workload, Hanson said that given the choice she would take the course
again. "I've learned so much," she said. "I'm even thinking, because of
the course, of studying government in college." Hanson plans to attend
Georgetown University in the fall.
Based in Bellevue, Wash., APEX launched in January at 57 public and
private schools, and so far offers two courses, government and calculus.
The business is backed by Vulcan Ventures Inc., an investment company
started by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft.
The company may be unusual in trying to make a profit from distributing
Advanced Placement courses to far-flung students, but it is hardly the
only venture testing distance learning technology to teach sophisticated
content to high school students. For example, the Virtual High School, a
nonprofit Web learning project in which 44 participating schools share
online classes, offers several AP classes. So does Stanford University's
Education Program for Gifted Youth, although the technology of choice is
the CD-ROM.
And the Indiana Academy, a special program for gifted high school
students at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., uses a combination of
satellite television broadcasts and the Internet to teach five Advanced
Placement classes to students around Indiana and in other states.
What all these programs have in common is a conviction that many more
schools would like to offer Advanced Placement courses than do. Sally
Narodick, chief executive of APEX, said only about half of American high
schools include AP classes in their curriculum, and the majority offer
at most five of the 30 or so possible subjects. The reason, said Matthew
M. Rickett, associate director for public programs at the Indiana
Academy, is that schools often cannot afford to employ a teacher in a
class with the generally limited enrollment of AP courses.
Like six other students at Catholic High School, Hanson takes the
government course during her free period in a computer-equipped room in
the school's guidance office. Pacing herself, she is responsible for
working through seven units of dense content, from foundations of
American government to public policy. She views online tutorials that
contain sound and animated illustrations of material; looks Web sites
like one where users can hear Supreme Court Justices reading their
decisions; takes online quizzes and writes numerous essays that are
graded by an APEX instructor.
At first, Hanson found it tough going. For one thing, she had trouble
accessing certain course material online from computers at home and at
school, which delayed instruction in the first two weeks of the course.
Over time, Hanson said, the problems diminished, adding that the
company's technical support staff proved readily available to help.
Hanson also found it a challenge to be responsible for pacing herself.
"You don't have a teacher saying 'You have to turn this paper in next
week or you get an 'F.' You have to be self-disciplined," she said.
A different aspect of online instruction was jarring to Stephen F.
Murray, a 17-year-old senior at Cedarville High School in Cedarville,
Mich.: the lack of face-to-face interaction with a teacher. "I like to
be able to look a person in the eye and talk to them," he said.
Nonetheless, he added, he has enjoyed the class, which he described as
both interesting and rigorous.
Narodick, of APEX, said several schools had experienced technical
problems, but that difficulties waned as the semester progressed. "It's
a learning curve for us, too," she said.
Narodick also noted that one glitch the company had not anticipated was
sibling battles over phone lines when students try to do APEX online
work from home. "One of the biggest barriers to the kids is the sister
who yells at them that 'You are tying up the phone and my boyfriend
can't call,'" she said.
The result is that next fall, when APEX introduces three new AP courses,
it plans to distribute CD-ROMs with certain course material for home
use.
As for the lack of human contact, Narodick said APEX does not suggest
that its courses are a replacement for traditional classroom
instruction. "We are offering these courses for kids who don't have
access to a qualified teacher," she said.
Narodick also said that she has found that students often need some
adult prodding to get the work done. Schools, she said, are told to
appoint an adult advisor to work with students. "They need to be a coach
and a designated nagger," she said.
Indeed, Karen A. Grauman, chairman of the guidance department at
Charlotte Catholic and the volunteer who oversees APEX instruction at
the school, said she has given gentle reminders to the students to keep
up with 10 hours of work a week required by the class. She found that
they became particularly disciplined shortly before quarterly grades
were to be recorded.
Just how effective the class has been in teaching is still unknown,
Grauman said. "The proof will be the Advanced Placement exams," she
said. "And we won't have the results of them until July."
Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and
The Times has no control over their content or availability.
Advanced Placement Program
(http://www.collegeboard.org/ap/students/index.html)
APEX (http://www.apex.netu.com/)
Virtual High School (http://vhs.concord.org/home.htm)
Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth
(http://www-epgy.stanford.edu/)
Indiana Academy's AP offerings
(http://www.bsu.edu/teachers/academy/insite/high-school.html)