Apex Learning

Apex Learning

By:Emily Laurenzi

Two years ago, National Sports Academy decided to take an approach at something new and utilized Apex Learning in order to make it easier for the students to keep up with school work while traveling.

The program worked well for luge athletes who were gone for months at a time, however, for the hockey players who missed about one day of school a week it was more of a struggle.

It gave luge athletes the ability to get ahead and stay ahead while they were away, but gave other athletes a disadvantage in the classroom.

NSA students on Apex

Not only the students, but the teachers as well had to adjust to this new way of learning and teaching. Because everything was online, many teachers drifted away from actually teaching.

The year 2009- 2010 was Kelsey Lynch’s first year at NSA, and every one of her classes were on Apex. She immediately saw dramatic decreases in all of her grades. “I called my Mom wanting to come home” Lynch said, “I was so stressed out and had never had grades so low.”

Kelsey Lynch is now a senior at NSA and has no classes online this year. She made first quarter high honor roll along with fourteen other students.

Apex is set up so that if you do not pass a quiz with at least a 70 percent then you are required to take it again until you pass. The problem with this is once you are on your third time taking the quiz it is easy to memorize the questions especially in certain classes.

I believe that the biggest problem with Apex is the amount of distractions you come across. It is close to impossible for a high school student to log on to a computer with out immediately going to check Facebook or Twitter.

Along with the distractions students have access to wiki answers, yahoo answers, and millions of other answer sites; making it easier for students to pass quizzes, however, lowering their ability to learn.

Two years later only 25 percent of teachers at NSA are still continuing to use Apex.  Students feel as if there is much more interaction in class now and they are learning more and receiving higher grades as a result.