I'm currently midway through my first course with APU. It's a political science course on the presidency. This week I have to take the midterm, but I'm concerned because I have no idea what it will be like. It's worth 30% of the grade, so I definitely don't want to bomb it, but I don't know the format or even what types of material it might cover. Our discussions have been pretty specific, but the readings have pretty much covered the entire presidency from creation to present in detail. I'm nervous they might ask about specifics that I may have missed in the reading or the lecture notes (which are out of date). Does anyone have experience with APU exams that would be willing to share information about their format? I'm not looking for exam questions or anything, just information about what it might be like. Thanks, Matt
I’ve taken several classes with them that had a midterm and a final, some proctored, some just timed. Each one was very different, I think something great about APUS is that they seem to be letting the instructors actually put the syllabus together, instead of a lot of schools that have canned ones put together by instructional course creating specialists or some such title. In all cases I hated the APUS exams because they were very hard. I took the History of Political Philosophy (or some such title polysci graduate class) where after reading the midterm I honestly started to panic, but only had like 3 hours or something to get my act together (I got like a C- on thr mid-term and a B in the class). There is no two ways about it, you’re going to have to study and be ready for anything already covered or in the book.
I took some exams at Columbia Southern, and half of the exam were items not covered in the class, I concentrated in trying to cover what was covered in the class first and then do my best in the area that I did not know.
I teach at AMU/APU and as an instructor I have complete autonomy on how I want to structure my exams. Since I teach in the fire science program, most of my exams are technical in nature, so I use primarily multiple choice and short answer questions in my exams.
I am also an instructor at AMU/APU and I love the fact that they give their instructors the freedom to develop their own way of facilitating the courses. I design my syllabi with distance students in mind because I know students are taking courses from all over the world to include combat zones. I teach two lower level undergraduate math courses for AMU/APU. Anyway, I design my quizzes and exams so the difficulty is hard enough such that not everyone earns an A, but easy enough so students don't fail [unless they are truly lost or just don’t care]. For each quiz and exam, I have a target grade point average in mind and I adjust the difficulty of my exams accordingly. I also test my students equally on each section covered in class. If we cover five sections for a particular quiz, then I will include two problems from each section on the quiz.
Thanks for your comments about the exams and the extra stuff about the syllabi that really didn't pertain to me. Although, if professors are able to do their own syllabus, they should probably do their own course materials such as the lecture notes (and keep them updated). Maybe I'm just being picky. I'm just really nervous about the test. I've gotten 100's on everything so far in the class, and I finished my MS with a 4.0. Granted that wasn't at APU and it wasn't in Poly Sci. The exam is worth 30% of my grade, so if I were to bomb it, I might as well just quit the class. I'll let you all know how I do and what the exam was like. Thanks again, Matt
I see you asphyxiated(pardon my phrase) to maintain a 4.0 at all cost and it seems that disturbs you to fail or get a lower grade than an A. You should not be afraid to now and then get a lower grade(you can't win them all). That can be healthy and it may show your are not afraid to fail. Best of luck to you.
Oh, believe me. I'm NOT afraid to get less than an A. I was quite happy with the C I got in my second semester of calculus as an undergrad Stupid infinite series screwed me over. However, if I were to ever pursue a doctorate, I want to have the best possible grades to boost my attractiveness. -Matt
Exam's Over... and graded! So I spent Sunday completing my exam for the course I'm taking with APU. It was an open-book exam with 6 essay questions of varying points. Being a little paranoid, I ended up spending roughly 9 hours writing for the test. I just wanted to be thorough, since I felt as if we had gotten very little guidance from our instructor. I suppose that as a teacher, I feel I have to give quality feedback to my students, so I believe my teachers should do the same. Unfortunately this isn't the case. The one comment I received on one discussion post was simply "good". She doesn't interact with the discussion at all, which most of the instructors I've had have done. However, in returning to my point, I spent the day working on my essays for the exam. I re-read, quoted, and explained as much as I could. I logged on today to see if it had been graded. I do have to say, she is pretty quick if anything else. I scored a 297 out of a possible 300 points. I see that I lost the 3 points on one essay question, though I don't know why. Honestly, though, I don't really care. After all my panicking and worrying, I am QUITE happy with that score. Three more weeks to go, and then it's on to course number 2 with APU. YAY! -Matt
Thanks... although if it weren't open book, I probably would've wet myself and hid in the corner crouched in the fetal position. I don't know if it is the discipline or the school, but this exam was WAAAAAAY harder than any of my education courses at Walden, Phoenix, or Virginia Tech. -Matt
Yes, granted I wish they were shorter, at least I feel like I'm getting my money's worth. So far I can't say anything negative about my experience with APU. I'm starting my second course next month. Hopefully it's equally as good. -Matt
