Modern Terminal Exam Review Structures

I’ve been pretty preoccupied this week helping my ELA colleague deploy this year’s rounds of middle school testing, so I’ll hold off on the major AdminThoughts until next week. At the same time, I don’t want to let the week go to waste. Fortunately, I’ve got something to talk about.

Last year, I cobbled together a review structure for AP Biology that allowed me to broadcast a review session on YouTube for any students that were interested in watching it. Once that initial, rather rough, attempt was completed, I worked with a team of NYS chemistry teachers to refine the approach for a 12-hour broadcast of live-streamed review sessions for the Chemistry Regents Exam. I wrote about all of that here, if you want to go for a deep dive.

Now it’s a year later, and we’re doing it again. We’ve set up a schedule of online review sessions for AP Biology (http://bit.ly/APBioRevSchedule2017), and have gathered a team of instructors to both host sessions, and serve as moderators during the sessions (there’s a live chat window for any live YouTube broadcast). We’re using a form for students to submit their questions prior to the sessions (http://bit.ly/APBioReviewQuestions2017). All of this is live right now. If you are so inclined, please share it widely with the target audience of AP Biology teachers and students.

Moving through this process three times has also resulted in the development a system that can be used for anyone who wants to do similar types of reviews for other exams. If you are/know someone who might be interested in steering a similar type of effort for a different exam, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, and I’ll share the materials that you might need. In the modern era, I really don’t know why this isn’t done more widely than it seems to be.

Okay, digression over. I’ll be back to AdminStuff next week, I promise.