By now students are aware that online AP exams are being administered this May, but many are unsure of how to prepare for their exams. Remote schooling can be a difficult form of learning for many students, and it can also be a challenge for teachers to effectively teach the necessary content and review it. College Board is now releasing their own AP exam review videos, available at College Board’s Advanced Placement Youtube channel, as a solution.
The AP Youtube channel has been around for over a decade, and has viewable content from over seven years ago. However, in the past two weeks, hundreds of videos have been released that contain content reviews of all AP classes offered from AP teachers around the country selected by College Board. There are several videos on every Advanced Placement class from AP World History to AP Calculus BC.
The videos are about 45 minutes on average, and usually range from 25 minutes to an hour. Many of the videos have a similar structure. The video starts off with a general topic that will be explained over the course of the video. Then there is some sort of warm up, for example an exercise to do, or a basic question. Many of these ‘warm-up’ questions are based on the previous video in the series for each AP class. The majority of the video contains content related to the topic presented at the start of the video, with free response questions integrated throughout. Because the questions are coming from College Board, they familiarize the student with the type of questions that will be asked on the new AP exam.
“What I find helpful is that it goes through rubrics and sample answers for each question so you know what they expect,” said AP Biology and AP Psychology teacher Shi Bing Shen. However, she also pointed out that “the presentation part could be made more interesting and engaging.”
Junior Noah Stein said, “The videos seem to provide a good overview of the subjects and types of problems that will be on the test.” Despite this, he came to a similar conclusion to Ms. Shen: “The videos [did] seem a bit monotonous at some points.”
Overall, what the videos lack in entertainment, they certainly make up for in their AP level questions that are completely aligned to the Collegeboard curriculum and AP exams. Because mock tests from Collegeboard are yet to be released, the free response questions provided in these videos are the closest thing AP students have at the moment to a mock test.
Below are links to more information on the AP Youtube channel itself, as well as an explanation from Collegeboard on how to navigate the Youtube channel, more information on the videos, and the schedule of when new videos will be released.
AP Youtube channel information and resources: https://apcoronavirusupdates.collegeboard.org/educators/course-schedule
AP Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/advancedplacement/featured
