Advanced Placement Courses Online

JMParent · 02-05-2008, 12:54 PM

Has anyone tried online Advanced Placement Courses when your student's school does not offer a particular AP Subject?

I realize that my s can take the test without taking a course, but what about the impact to his transcript and gpa? Wouldn't we want the high school credits?

We are particularly interested in the Economics (micro or macro). Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

tokenadult · 02-05-2008, 01:25 PM

I've heard from an investment banker that the JHU-CTY course in microeconomics is quite good.

http://cty.jhu.edu/cde/advancedplace...economics.html

My son is taking the AP statistics course from CTD right now.

http://ctd.northwestern.edu/learning/coursesap.html#97

JHU, CTD, and EPGY

http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/physics/ap.html

all have online AP courses, as does Pennsylvania Homeschoolers.

http://www.pahomeschoolers.com/courses/index.html

I think EPGY has the most flexible schedule, for the courses it offers.

starbright · 02-05-2008, 01:34 PM

I was just talking to a dept head at D's school yesterday. Her HS doesn't offer much in the way of AP courses. But one student, who went to Yale last year, somehow managed to rack up 15 AP courses! So clearly he must have found things outside of school. I'd be curious of other sources people find.

cheeky2126 · 02-05-2008, 01:38 PM

Yeah, I live in Florida and we have the Florida Virtual School where students can take courses for free. I took the AP Microeconomics class online this summer, and I'ld have to admit that it was not thorough at all. The only way to truly succeed and love the material in this class is to read the online textbook many many times. The teachers are there to help.. but it's not like a traditional high school setting. I have had friends take other classes online and none have scored above a 3 on the AP exam.

So... if your S decides he wants to take the class for getting credit, then I would recommend doing so, but if he is very interested in economics and wants to major in economics, then I would suggest against it. But this is based only on my experience with FLVS (not sure how other online schools work).

JMParent · 02-05-2008, 04:14 PM

Thanks, cheeky and everyone for your information.

Cheeky, did you get a grade and credit for the course on your transcript?

Calreader · 02-05-2008, 04:27 PM

My daughter took the AP Chemistry course from JHU-CTY and it was not a good experience. Especially considering the price, but it still would have been a poor value even if it had been free. The teacher did not seem very skillful or engaged. She interacted very little with the students, mostly just assigning them page numbers to read. She didn't have them interact with each other either, even though this class was offered in a 9-month format so there was a class there. Her response to questions about the content was to tell the student to reread the text.

I had exchanged some email with one of the regular teachers for this course ahead of time, and she sounded great. But the teacher my daughter got was someone different. I actually wondered if her email messages were generated by an AI program for awhile, but no, I think there was a human at the other end.

bookworm · 02-05-2008, 04:33 PM

In Fl, credit is given for the virtual course. S took one class on-line, and teacher was a college prof. The book used was same as regular HS curriculum. Cheeky makes an excellent point, in not taking a class that S is planning to pursue as his major, as he could miss the classroom discussion.

Just a suggestion, but have you looked into econ classes at a local U? My S took both econ courses from an excellent college professor.

JMParent · 02-05-2008, 04:54 PM

Yes, we have looked into taking econ at a local university, and we're not ruling it out yet. It's just a matter of logistics - his ec's tend to be in the way.

One way or another, we would like to show College Admins that he's going the extra mile.

intellec7 · 02-06-2008, 10:21 AM

IMO, FLVS courses are generally of high quality. Apart from the occasional typo/computer glitch, the teachers are all very friendly (they have to be! they go through a few dozen workshops!) and it is not that difficult to be successful. You have to not become distracted and you have to have the motivation. In most of the classes, in order to ensure you understand the material, you should resubmit the assignment until you get a perfect score. This seems to be especially the case in AP Calc.

I've also taken Macroeconomics and the text book was VERY boring in my opinion. We used an online Krugman-Wells and it was very long. The course assigned page numbers to read, and then there were several online assessments about the material. I'm sure that all the information that was covered will appear somewhere on the AP Exam, but I'm more interested in understanding the bulk of economics, and not necessarily every single detail. I called my instructor many, many times, and she was always glad and able to help.

For the classroom discussion point: most AP teachers hold online class seminar sessions to go over important material, where students enter a virtual room with a virtual white board and you can type/talk to each other. It is also my opinion that discussions had in a typical classroom environment have served very little purpose to me, as so far most of the schools I have gone to, students really could care less about the material and are more concerned with getting their grade, not with having an intelligent conversation with their pees.

My $.02.

dufay · 02-06-2008, 12:35 PM

My D has taken 2 AP courses through Apex Learning(Bio, USH)- very thorough, a lot of work, lots of DBQs etc in USH, reading- but 5s in both. Teachers have office hours and generally responded quickly. apexlearning.com
She is/has taken AP Euro, AP Psych, and AP English Lit through Aventa Learning- I'm less impressed with the course content delivery, but again, quite a bit of reading/writing. Hasn't taken the AP exams for these (no point, except for Psych- she'll get no credit).
University of Miami Online HS is excellent, but somewhat pricier.I don't think they offer AP Econ, though.

With these courses, there is a timeline and structure, and teachers will "get"after you if you lag. Not for the unmotivated!

MomOFour · 02-06-2008, 03:12 PM

Quote:

One way or another, we would like to show College Admins that he's going the extra mile.

Unless he's at a limited high school without AP or rigorous honors courses, I don't know if this is really worth it. If you go through various results threads here you'll see kids who have tons of APs who wondered what more they had to do to be admitted. One more AP on top of several from school may not be as impressive as an essay written about work experience or independent research or just doing something for the fun of it. If it's something your son is driven to study out of intellectual curiousity then fine, but if he'd rather be doing something else maybe it's better to let him do the something else.

JMParent · 02-07-2008, 08:31 AM

MomofFour,

You make an excellent point, but this is a kid who thrives in Mathematics, is on the Math team, and will probably go into a business-related field.

You did give me a great idea about independent study, something I hadn't considered. Maybe some kind of statistical study.....

Thanks to all for your replies. This is all very helpful! We're waiting to hear from his GC her thoughts.

eg1 · 02-07-2008, 01:46 PM

@tokenadult - What is your opinion on the CTD Online AP class? Has your son done any others through them? We're looking at some of their classes for next year, though my daughter would probably do an AP English class.

fauve · 02-07-2008, 02:09 PM

Last year our senior took APEX Physics AP online, it was horrible: Many mistakes in the scrolled text (mixed up or mislabeled variables in formulas), no visuals whatsoever, kitchen equipment labs that would pop up and be due on Friday nights, etc. Online teacher took a long time to answer questions, and after the weekly quizzes, the students had no way of knowing what mistakes they made, as they could not see the graded quiz. So problems with material just compounded weekly. Never a chance to learn from mistakes. It was the first year the course was offered, hopefully they will at least correct the physics errors.

The Spanish AP online was slightly better, but there were always problems with the quality of the spoken assignments sent, and grades were lowered if the quality of the sound was poor, or too soft. Also, instructor had a thick mid-western twang accented Spanish and did not approve of a more Mexican-accented tone. Did not provide good prep for the AP test at all. And it was very expensive. Avoid these courses if at all possible.

eg1 · 02-07-2008, 02:36 PM

So far, APEX USH and Bio sound good, APEX Physics and Spanish not so great. Any other experiences people could share? Did the physics labs and bio labs match the recommended AP labs (as listed on the collegeboard site)?

I am thinking ahead to next fall for my high schoolers - we homeschool part-time and do not have APs offered where the kids go for outside classes.