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Published: December 5, 2013

 

To ease the way for students grappling with certain key concepts, professors at Davidson College in North Carolina will design online lessons for high school students in Advanced Placement courses in calculus, physics and macroeconomics and make them widely available through the College Board and edX, a nonprofit online education venture.

“We joined edX in May, specifically because many of our faculty wanted to work on this Advanced Placement project,” said Carol Quillen, the president of Davidson. “They see kids come into their introductory classes, year after year after year, and get stuck on certain concepts, like the Phillips curve in macroeconomics, and they wanted to create some interactive online units that teachers could use to help teach the hardest ideas.”

The Davidson faculty involved in the project had already worked with the College Board, grading or writing Advanced Placement exams or teaching summer workshops for A.P. high school teachers. Now, using the College Board’s data from the Advanced Placement exams in the three subjects, and working with teachers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, they are preparing modules on the trickiest concepts in each subject, including a video lesson and assignments.

High school teachers will be able to use them in their classes or assign them as homework. And the lessons will also be available online on the edX platform for students trying to learn the subject independently. Read more.