WICHE: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education

III.  Improving Online Options

The availability of online advanced placement courses for students and professional development training for teachers is expanding rapidly. As with many efforts to incorporate information technology in teaching and learning, the availability of material exceeds our ability to judge its utility, quality, value, and effectiveness. WCALO is assisting states and school districts with several aspects of online advanced placement activities, including conducting original research on low-income students' experiences with online advanced placement courses (see WCALO publications) and a web-based tool that enables educators and administrators to examine availability and quality of existing online AP courses in order to make more informed decisions on which provider will best serve your students. The new web-based resource provides independent reviews of a variety of content, instructional design, and technical characteristics for selected online AP courses. This web site enables you to choose a subset of courses to perform side-by-side comparisons of the reviewed characteristics. Please visit EduTools for Online Advanced Placement Courses at http://wcalo.edutools.info.

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