9486 in the collection
AP virtual labs questioned
Online science courses lack crucial experience, College Board says.
Suggestion: Why not wait and take the course in college? What's the rush?
By Amy Hetzner
Would poison alter the amount of carbon dioxide in yeast? To answer that question, high school junior Evelyn Libal developed a hypothesis, designed an experiment and studied results from scientists who had conducted such tests.
The only thing missing from the 16-year-old's work, done for an Advanced Placement biology course offered through one of the state's virtual schools, was actually conducting the experiment.
And that's where the College Board, which administers the AP program, could have a problem.
Differences in the kind of lab work done by students enrolled in virtual schools vs. traditional classrooms have become an issue in an ongoing audit of AP courses.
So far, thousands of teachers worldwide have successfully completed audits of their syllabuses to ensure that they are teaching what is expected for the AP label.
But the majority of science courses offered by virtual schools with computerized simulations have been given only provisional permission to continue calling themselves AP classes as they align their lab work with AP standards over the next year.
For many, that means more hands-on experiments.
"If schools can provide evidence that they're providing a college-level experience to their students, even though they don't meet the sort of letter of the law for the curriculum requirements, we are willing to evaluate those experiences against college-level requirements," said Tom Matts, the AP course audit director for the College Board. "By definition, virtual schools that offer entirely virtual lab experiments simply don't meet the requirement."
The effects are being felt in Wisconsin at iQ Academies, the virtual high school operated by the Waukesha School District, and at Wisconsin Virtual School, based in Tomahawk.
Both schools get their AP curriculum through Aventa Learning, which has not yet received full approval from the College Board for its AP biology and chemistry courses, although it does have approval for the 2007-'08 school year.
Although students can still earn college credit based on their performance on AP examinations without taking courses that bear the AP label, Aventa curriculum director Chris Harry said his company was working with the College Board to meet its requirements. He said he was confident all of Aventa's AP courses would be approved by the start of the 2008-'09 school year.
"The AP label is very important," Harry said. "It certainly signifies a level of rigor within the course."
As they work with the College Board to meet its requirements for their science courses, however, some online educators complain they have been singled out.
While AP course reviewers ran through the simulated labs for virtual-school classes, teachers in traditional schools had to indicate only what labs they were teaching in the syllabuses they submitted to the College Board, said Cheryl Vedoe, chief executive officer for Apex Learning.
Providers worried
Online providers also worry that basing AP approval on lab requirements could put their students, many of whom are taking the classes because their own schools don't offer them, at a disadvantage.
"Because they're in a school without an AP program, they're also in a school that most likely doesn't have an adequate lab facility and, even if they did, they're not likely to have a qualified teacher to monitor that student in AP-required labs," said Vedoe, whose company provides online AP courses, primarily through contracts with traditional schools.
Some also wonder if the lab work involved in science classes is important enough to hinge AP approval on it.
To Terry Johnson, who taught science for 15 years in a brick-and-mortar setting before joining iQ Academies two years ago, classroom laboratories are a nice addition but not essential.
He said his students learn the same thinking skills taught in non-simulated labs, in addition to all the content.
"I don't really think that a student that is an AP-level student is going to benefit greatly or have an advantage if they've gone through a virtual lab or a real lab," Johnson said. "I don't think it really makes a difference."
Evelyn Libal, who started taking AP biology from iQ Academies this year, does.
But she thinks she's learning more from simulated lab experiences, which have allowed her opportunities such as looking at slides through an online electron scanning microscope, than she did in her chemistry class in a traditional school.
"In chemistry, we do assignments or whatever, but we wouldn't design the experiments," Libal said. "Here I think it's actually better, because you have to figure out how you would make an experiment. . . . I think that's really cool."
Her mother, Laura Libal, a former biology teacher and school technology coordinator, also said Evelyn gets plenty of hands-on experience from the family's 80-acre farm near Lake Mills.
"All the things that I see her doing at home is the same process that you would do in a classroom lab," she said. "I don't have any concern about her not having the skill to handle a lab in college."
Dave Nelson, director of the Center for Biology Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hands-on laboratories should be a part of AP courses if they are to replace freshman-level college courses.
"Nothing is quite as helpful as hands-on experience when it comes to really developing some savvy in a subject," said Nelson, a biochemistry professor. "If you gave me a choice of a student to work in my own lab between someone who had a very extensive but electronic course and somebody who had been tinkering with something, I'd take the tinkerer any day."
— Amy Hetzner
Journal-Sentinel
2007-11-17
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=687379&format=print
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
