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September 15, 2001
Online Professional Development (cont'd)
Apex Learning
Apex's new virtual school targets the AP teaching market with five 15-hour workshops designed to help both new and seasoned teachers prepare themselves and their students for AP exams. Teaching AP Economics, English Literature, Calculus, and U.S. History are all available in self-paced and group options.
Course Title:
Teaching AP English Literature and Composition
After taking a brief self-assessment designed to evaluate how much I know about AP English exam requirements, I dug into this sequential, six-lesson course that moved from understanding the AP test requirements to building and implementing a teaching approach that best helps students prepare for the exam. The segment on teaching strategies was quite helpful for its introducton to a "six trait" criteria model for evaluating students' essay exams. Reflection and development exercises followed brief reading assignments, all of which I could download in a handy "Take It with You Packet." Once I finished the reading, the major assignment asked me to create an AP English course syllabus, which I could then submit via the easy-to-use file exchange tool accessed within the course.
Teaching AP English is not a difficult course, covering only those topics relevant to a teacher preparing students for the AP test. The workshop offers primarily text-based information (PDF files or Web pages) with some multimedia, and assignments are very straightforward, e.g., compare and contrast teaching methods discussed in the reading. Teachers who competently finish all assignments can expect to receive a grade of "Complete." Given my "guest" status, I couldn't get a sense of the amount of student-instructor involvement, but Apex claims that participants use bulletin boards, chat, e-mail, and even the phone to communicate with each other. Overall, the emphasis here is on teaching to the AP test-and not much more-but pacing, readings, and assignments were very appropriate for this focus.
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