In a school year when almost everything is different due to the impact of the coronavirus, Kentucky students who take Advanced Placement courses to earn college credit have one more new experience facing them.
The College Boardis allowing students to take AP exams this year from home, on a computer, a tablet or a mobile phone.
Students will log in for a specific AP subject exam, on the same day, at the same time nationwide.
Owensboro High School English teacher Daniel Brown has about 130 students in several courses, with about 60 of those in his AP Literature and Composition classes.
With no in-person classes in Kentucky for the remainder of the academic year, Brown said he and his AP students are making the most of technology to prepare for the AP Literature exam on May 13.
“You know, half of my schedule is AP Literature. It’s a college level course, we still have an AP exam, " said Brown. "So those students, we’re still having Zoom meetings, doing seminars over novels and things like that, so I have physically, or I guess virtually, seen almost every one of those students.”
The College Board has made revisions to the AP exams due to the disruption in regular classes because schools have had to transition to virtual learning as a result of the pandemic.
“AP decided we’re going to basically pause the curriculum where we left off and we’re going to assess them on the main criteria, which for my course is basically analyzing and writing about prose fiction," said Brown. "So they receive a passage of prose fiction they haven’t seen before and they have 45 minutes to read, analyze and construct a response.”
Owensboro High School offers AP courses in 15 subjects, and 171 students in the school have signed up to take a total of 286 AP subject exams.
The AP subject exams will be held from May 11-22. With students allowed to take the exams from home, the College Board has implemented security measures that include plagiarism detection software ,and sending copies of the student exam work to the teacher, so they can spot possible inconsistencies with the students' previous work.
