It is May.
Graduation is right around the corner, finals are looming over everyone, and Prom has made it almost impossible to focus. However, for many students, they are not worried about finals for some classes. Instead, they get to sit in the Huntley Park District for four hours while they take a college-level exam: the AP tests.
Most Huntley students end up taking an AP class over their high school career whether it is AP World History or AP Human Geography their freshman year or AP Calculus AB or AP Psychology their senior year. However, this year is the first year that the College Board will be moving the AP tests online. Though it seems too early to worry about the change, students and teachers are still in the dark about the changes in questions, timing, and overall look of the AP tests.
“I do not know how your testing booklet is going to look,” AP Chemistry teacher Allison Tuleo said. “I do not know if [the] periodic table is going to be on the computer or not.”
AP Chemistry will still have the free-response questions on paper; however, the questions will be displayed on the Chromebook screen. This is the same for the AP math classes and other AP sciences. As well, the multiple-choice will be online where students get scratch paper to do their work and cross out any wrong answers.
There has been little information given to teachers about what will be on the Bluebook testing app and what will not. The requirements for the AP tests are not changing; however, as with the SAT last year, people are assuming that the look of the questions may change. There are no practices for online tests yet, so teachers are having to use their old practices and move whatever they can online.
“For unit one, students took their short answer question in a lockdown Google form, so it still gave them the feeling of typing it,” AP US History teacher Jenna Gaudio said.
AP US History students have been taking their multiple choice questions online as well as their FRQs to prepare for the test in May. AP US History is one of 16 exams that are going completely digital this year.
Another fully digital test is AP Language and Composition, which after the change in requirements, is the English course seniors are automatically placed in and juniors are placed in if they are a year ahead. AP Lang was one of the first to move online.
“We write our essays online,” junior Samantha Tan said. “I like writing online more because it’s easier for me to rearrange things or put down my thoughts.”
Writing online may be easier, as students type their essays for other classes. However, in the case of multiple choice or math, paper may be easier to manipulate their answers.
“I predict that the raw multiple-choice scores will go down,” Tuleo said.
Another issue with online multiple-choice is that students may find it harder to cross out their answers despite having an annotate option.
“I like being able to physically cross out different answer options or underline things so I can process it better,” Tan said.
Though there will be no true change to the style of testing, AP students may still struggle with memorizing everything they have to as well as finding a new testing style to fit the online tests.
