The Blue & Gold

The official newspaper of Chamblee High School, preserving the past for the future today!

The official newspaper of Chamblee High School, preserving the past for the future today!

The Blue & Gold

The official newspaper of Chamblee High School, preserving the past for the future today!

The Blue & Gold

Online Courses Present Viable Solution for Schedule Conflicts

Online+Courses+Present+Viable+Solution+for+Schedule+Conflicts

AP Micro/Macroeconomics or German 6? What about AP Physics C or AP Computer Science? These schedule conflicts are few examples encountered by students upon submitting their course selection forms. This in turn leaves students forced to miss out on an AP class they may be incredibly passionate about.

Taking online classes allows students to take classes they are deeply interested in, however aren’t able to take at school, while  also obtaining the credit for their transcripts.

“I wanted to take AP Human Geography last year, but I didn’t have room on my schedule,” said junior Sakshi Sehgal. “As a result, I took it online via the Georgia Virtual School.”

The online courses present a much different experience as compared to the structure found in the traditional classroom setting. This was especially obvious when it came to workload and motivation requirement.

“There was a lot more busy work, and the assignments were more time consuming in general,” said Aomeng Cui, a current freshman at Columbia University and a member of the Chamblee Class of 2016. “It’s also kind of obvious that the teachers are even less accessible, so I had to be more self motivated.”

These classes are set up by semesters, so all of the requirements/assignments are planned out ahead of time. Students can work ahead of time, if they choose to do so. There are deadlines for assignments, however, there aren’t any limits on how far ahead a student wished to work. These assignments were often electronic files that were later uploaded to a Dropbox-related service.

Taking an online class in addition to taking the full seven classes at Chamblee would also increase the magnitude of the workload and affect a student’s sleep.

“Many days, I would come home and work until the deadline (midnight) and then wake up just a few hours later to do my homework for my other classes,” said Sehgal.

The online courses also differed in the types of assignments given.

“Online classes always had a lot more projects, involving online programs which were supposed to be ‘interactive’,” said Cui.

However, there were a few similarities between the online courses and the traditional courses these students took at Chamblee.

“It wasn’t very hard to adjust once I figured out exactly what to do, how to do it, [and] what the expectations were,” said Sehgal.

Another similarity was the style of the tests and quizzes. In both types of courses, the teachers generally try to model the assessments after their respective AP exam.

“For tests and quizzes, the content was also pretty similar to what the actual exam was like,” said Sehgal. “[The multiple choice] on a test was like the official AP Human [multiple choice] and the [free response question] tests were from past exams.”

When it came to the AP exams and the scores they achieved, Cui and Sehgal earned two 5s and three 4s across the five AP exams they took combined.

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