AP American History Help Site

Service Learning Project Report

By:

Sarah White and Camilla Woolsey

It is a bright day in mid-May. A student enters a hot classroom with a number two pencil in hand. The student sits nervously at a desk as a proctor passes out a test packet and reads the instructions. This is the moment the student has been waiting for all year. This is the test he has been dreading all year. This is where his knowledge and application of knowledge will be put to the test. He waits for the proctor to give the word to break the seal and begin the exam. This is the Advanced Placement test. He looks at the test and begins to think he did not study enough. "What is Jackie Robinson famous for?" The student does not know! He begins to panic and immediately sets the atmosphere for the rest of the exam. If only he had had more help in studying.

Advanced Placement American History is one the AP courses offered at high schools across America such as Cedar City High School and Canyon View High School, both in Cedar City, Utah. Most teachers of these AP classes do a great job preparing students for the test at the end of the year. At Cedar City High School, the teacher, Richard Anderson, holds after school study sessions. The students gather together and practice taking multiple choice tests, and timed essays. They then discuss their responses, and evaluate what they could have done better. These study sessions give an advantage to the students who can make it to them, but about the students who are unable to make it after school? How can they effectively study on their own? Some students have older siblings who have taken the exam in past years. Those students have another source of help in their siblings. What about the eldest child, or the only child? There is a way to help students in situations such as those named above.

In discussing what Sarah and I could do to help others in our community, we went through a list of possible projects. None of the potential projects appealed to us as much as helping the local high school students. We were in high school once, so we could identify with the struggles that they may face while preparing for the AP American History exam. Our experiences with the test differed, but we both felt that more preparation would have been immensely beneficial. We decided that the best way for us to help would be to create a web site that students could go to in order to get advice from experienced test takers, and also to find other sites that would be helpful in studying and practicing for the big test.

In order to supply the students with a solid list of links, we searched through a number of possible sites. We examined them for content, relevancy, and usefulness. We each searched through some sites, and then compared notes. There were so many links we could have put up, but we posted only the sites we felt would help the most. The best site that we found was that of the College Board (collegeboard.com/ap/history). It is the official website for all AP tests. This is an extremely helpful site. It offers practical advice, information, and best of all, practice essays that one can write, the submit for an evaluation. Students who struggle with the written exams will find this to be very valuable. There are also practice multiple choice tests for the students who have a hard time recalling facts, or who just want extra practice.

Once we completed that portion of the project it was time to talk to students and teachers. We wanted to be sure we were creating something that really would be beneficial to students preparing to take the AP American History test. We gathered opinions and insights. We passed out questionnaires in our college class to get advice from others who had taken this AP test. We handed out approximately thirty surveys to our classmates. The questions were:

1. Did you take the AP American History Exam? Did you pass?

2. Is there anything you wish you would have done to prepare, but didn’t?

3. Do’s and Don’ts?

4. Any other advice?

We were quite surprised by the results we received from this questionnaire. Out of the thirty surveys that were handed out, only four people, other that Sarah and I, had taken the AP American History test. Three out of those four passed it. We had expected the number of test takers to be much higher. We assumed that most of the students in our class are enrolled in History 2710 for their major or minor. It seemed logical to us that those students would have at least attempted to take the AP American History test. It was more a shock than a surprise to us. Here are some of the responses we received:

We also gave a questionnaire to a couple of teachers who have had experience with the AP American History exam. The responses we received were very insightful. The instructor questionnaire included, but was not limited to, advice such as:

1. Key elements to a successful essay.

- "Understanding of the principles or issue upon which the question is based."

- Length of essay includes sufficient details to answer the question."

2. Common errors in any essy.

- "Limited planning - starting to write before one knows where one is going."

- "General points are not supported by specific or relevant facts."

3. What students should focus on the most in an essay exam.

- "Don’t overlook the critical need for evidence when arguing a position."

- " Integrate course materials to address major themes and questions."

Students would be wise to check out the counsel given in the advice page of our web site.

Sarah and I spoke to Mr. Anderson in order to find out what kind of information would be most helpful to his students, and dropped the questionnaire off to him. He seemed enthusiastic about our project, and was eager to see the finished product. There was a slight misunderstanding about how we intended to use the information we received from one of our respondents. He was under the impression that we were going to take his answers and try to pass them off as our own. We could not understand how he would have thought that. When we first spoke with him, we presented our entire project plan to him, and told him exactly how we were going to use his responses. I again explained our project, and how we planned to use his advice and give proper credit. After that explanation, we cleared up the misunderstanding, and gained permission to use his advice.

We now had the information we needed to begin our web site. We use the Dream Weaver software to create our site. In order to make it more aesthetically pleasing, Sarah and I searched the World Wide Web for patriotic pictures to adorn our pages. One of our pages is an advice page for students preparing for the test. I thought it would be funny to put a picture of the Lincoln Monument on that page. I only hope that the students visiting that page will understand it! Sarah and I worked on setting up the site for quite a few hours. We had just about everything completed when we discovered that some of our links were not working. Sarah and I did everything we could think of the fix the problem, but it was to no avail. We were getting really frustrated with the project. We didn’t know what to do at that point, then I remembered that one of my roommates was a senior computer science major. My roommate, Erin Brown, came to our rescue. Erin looked at our program, and in less than an hour, had most of the bugs worked out. She kept working on it for us, explaining to us what she was doing and why. I must admit, most of it went way over my head, although most things do. Our project would have fallen flat on its face had she not helped us out. She has continued to answer any and all questions we have had. She has also made sure that our site will not end up being a "cheesy" site. Incidentally, Sarah and I will be taking Erin to breakfast on Saturday morning. If anyone else would like to join, let us know, but we are only buying for Erin!

One thing we remember all too well is that studying can get pretty monotonous. We thought about what we could add to our site that might break that monotony. Sarah came up with the idea to include a game that the students could play while studying, something that might give the brain a rest. It is a game based on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? We hope that it will give them a bit of a break while still challenging their minds.

Sarah and I planned to spend at least twenty hours on this project. When all was said and done, we had spent over twenty hours preparing our site. Our "technical advisor" saved us a lot of time, energy, and frustration. This project was not quite as difficult as we had anticipated. It absolutely did present us with challenges and a sizeable workload, but it was easier than we made it out to be. I was also a lot more fun that we thought it would be.

It is a bright day in mid-May. A student enters a hot classroom with a number two pencil in hand. The student sits nervously at a desk as a proctor passes out a test packet and reads the instructions. This is the moment the student has been working towards all year. This is the test he has been dreading all year. His knowledge and application of knowledge is about to be put to the test. The proctor gives the word, and the student breaks the seal and begins the test. He looks at the test. "Compare and contrast the Constructionist views of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton." The student smiles to himself, and begins to make an outline of his essay, organizing his thoughts into a well-constructed essay. He feels confident in his abilities because he had help from the AP American History Help Site.

Camilla’s Evaluation on our Service Learning Project

I am pleased with the end results of this project. Sarah and I worked hard to put it all together. I think it turned out nicely, considering neither of us has had much experience in the field of creating web sites. The address for our site is http://www.davinci.sc.suu.edu/brown/page1.html . In consideration of time, we put it on Erin’s site. Sarah will transfer it to her site soon. I hope this will help all students, not just those at a disadvantage, to prepare for the AP American History exam.

There is one unavoidable problem with our site - the timing. Since this was Spring Semester, and the project was not due until the end, it does not give the students the time we had hoped for to explore our site and fully utilize all aspects of it. Perhaps the students next year will be able to use it the way we had intended it to be used. One thing we neglected to do was get out to Canyon View High School to speak with Mrs. Hodson. We plan on taking the information about our site to her soon. We would have liked to have her input incorporated into our site. Perhaps if someone wanted to update the site for next year, he/she could speak with Mrs. Hodson. I think this is something that should be shared with both high schools.

As I stated previously, this project was a lot more fun than I ever thought it would be. I must admit, at the beginning of the semester, I definitely had my doubts about service learning. I thought, "How is this going to help me? I am so busy already." More than once I rolled my eyes when the projects were mentioned. Over the course of the last four months, I have become a believer. I found myself enjoying the time I spent working on this project. I kept telling myself that I might be saving someone the fear of not being well prepared. I knew that fear all to well when I arrived at my high school the day of the AP American History test. I have been active in different service projects and events since I was a little girl. I have had many meaningful experiences. This is one of them. I hope that this project will help the high school students in our community. Maybe with this site, the scenario I envisioned at the beginning of this report will turn into the scenario at the end. Just in case anyone is wondering - yes, I did take the AP American History test, and yes, I did pass it. I was not able to attend after school study sessions while I was in high school, so I had to study on my own. I did feel prepared when I went into the test, but not as prepared as those who had attended the study sessions, or those who had older siblings with experience. I wish that I had had a site like this to help me better prepare for the exam.

Sarah’s Evaluation of our Service Learning Project

When I took the AP American test, I was a Junior at a brand new high school. It was the first year the class was offered, and the first year my teacher had taught it. If you combine that with the fact that the teacher did not want to teach it at all, it is pretty clear that my AP experience was not the greatest. I feel like I would have done better on the test if I had had somebody to help me out. There were 10 - 12 students in my class. None of them knew much about the test either, so we were all in the same sinking boat. We needed something. When Cami and I wer searching for a project, we had a hard time coming up with ideas. Some of the ideas we did come up with fell through. We talked a little about our AP experiences, and decided to try something with that. We finally came up with a way to help the AP students in Cedar City. We decided to create a web site. Because of my own personal feelings and experiences with the AP American history, I thought a web site could be very beneficial. There is still a lot that I would have liked to have put on our site, but we ran out of time.

I think now that everything is done, it all turned out all right. Everything a high school student needs to know about the AP American History test is either on our site, or is linked to it. I wish them all luck and a good time.