How are Florida Virtual School AP courses?

One response to “How are Florida Virtual School AP courses?”

1. 
   SupaStudy

   May 8, 2011 at 4:40 am | Permalink

   I, like you, have taken many regular and honors FLVS courses, and I’ve enjoyed them (for the most part).

   I am currently on the last week of my AP course and have only one or two assignments left– honestly, I really really regret taking the course.

   While the first module was user friendly, I found (after my grace period of 30 days) that the teacher was extremely vague with answers and did little in the way of proper instruction. Module exams and specific questions on regular exams were absurdly hard. I have no problem with difficult questions, but the issue is 50% OF THE QUESTIONS OR ASSIGNMENTS GIVEN ARE NOT ADDRESSED BY THE FLVS COURSE OR SUPPLIED TEXTBOOK.

   This is not exaggeration; I have an A in the course, but its come with an absurd amount of work not proportionate to a real AP class.

   Every module after module 2 (in my specific AP course) I would read and study both the module explanation and the assigned chapters in the textbook, and while that did supply some information, the questions on assignments are extensive and ask of information that can not possibly be found in the book (once I even reread the chapters before and after the required one, just to make sure I wasnt missing it).

   The lessons are way too condensed, and the teachers dont care enough to supplement that. My friend (who is ranked number one in our class) has been taking this course with me and she also is finishing up. She hates it. Shes agreed with me that the lessons and information provided is inadequate, while all the tests are just previous AP questions thrown in. There is a severe lack of order within the course.

   I regret it a lot, and I’ve taken many other AP courses in real life and received a 5. I dont feel prepared for this test, yet I have 5000000000000000 pages of notes.

   okay, now that my rant is over, to answer your specific points:

   1. You take the AP test at any testing center; if your school teaches this course it is likely you can test there. If not, another local school is more than likely to be an applicable place.

   2. The regular courses are stupid-easy on FLVS. I’ve taken 8 non-AP courses on FLVS with a final grade of at least 95% on all of them. Most of the answers for regular courses can be googled. Dont expect that with AP, it seems that all questions posted on yahoo answers in regards to the FLVS assignment questions are deleted within several hours. Module 1 and 2 will be extremely simple, afterwords it will get increasingly difficult. However, the intensity of every course is different dependent on the subject.

   3. I dont know yet, you need to ask your guidance counselor as different schools have different policies.

   I’ve had a bad experience, but to be a little positive, I did take FLVS programming and found it to be of exceptional quality. I also think a programming course would be great when taken online, especially since the best resources for that subject are found online as well.
   Heres what I suggest:
   1. sign up for the course
   2. Spend the grace period looking over a couple lessons from EVERY module. Get a good idea of the structure of the course.
   3. Look at example AP tests and then look at some of the questions given in later modules; do they look similar? Is it too simplified?
   4. Look at the annoucements page, is your teacher active? Do they post frequently with tips and added resources? What are their qualifications?
   5. At the end of the grace period make a decision.

   also, if you take an AP course with FLVS it is only an HONORS credit. It only becomes an AP credit AFTER you have taken the AP test. If you dont take the AP test it will always remain an honors credit.