Successful completion of rigorous AP courses and high scores on the year-end AP exams provide students the opportunity to earn college credit as well as boost their high school grade point average, making them more competitive for entry to University of California and elite universities throughout the nation.

Affluent school districts routinely offer AP and other college preparatory courses, giving their students an advantage that their peers in low-income and remote areas don't usually have because the schools don't have the resources or are not able to recruit qualified teachers to teach the courses.

For three years now, the UC College Prep Initiative (UCCP) has been attempting to level the playing field for students in these areas by offering AP, as well as Honors, courses through the Internet. UCCP, which is administered from UC Santa Cruz, offers the online courses at no cost to students in California high schools that have "underdeveloped college preparatory curricula." These are typically low-performing schools with few if any AP courses, low four-year college participation rates, and with 50% of students receiving free/reduced lunch.

Screen shot of online AP Physics B course offered by UCCP (Source: Rafael Granados, UCCP)

UCCP uses a combination of Internet, CD-ROM technology and textbooks to offer its courses, most of which are developed by commercial vendors but some of which are developed in-house by UC faculty. (Honors courses, which comprise roughly 15% of UCCP enrollments, are developed by UC Extension.) The rich multimedia content contained in many of the AP and Honors courses - which can be cumbersome to download from a dial-up connection -- can be accessed by students in many schools, in part because of the Corporation for Educational Network Initiatives in California's (CENIC) Digital California Project, which in recent years has been working to extend to every county (and by extension school districts) in the state the high-speed Internet network used by California research universities.

UCCP was the brainchild of UCSC Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Francisco Hernandez. Passionate about creating equal opportunities for access to higher education, Hernandez has expanded UCCP's offerings each of the past three years, and this year broadened its services by implementing AP Exam Review in 14 subject areas and free online SAT and ACT test preparation to all California students. UCCP is also offering support to teachers by hosting "Online Teaching and Learning Institutes" in the summer.

"A question I hear a lot is: 'What is the university doing in the high school business?'," says Hernandez. "The answer is that there are students who are just not here (at UC) yet. And so we invest in them. From my perspective it makes sense for UC to play a lead role in California in pioneering efforts in e-learning and virtual schooling. We should be involved. Our researchers research it and our staff and faculty experiment with, and engage in, distance and online learning."

The UCCP program has quickly taken hold in schools throughout the state. Since its inception in 1999, UCCP has had over 14,000 enrollments, many of them students from schools in the Central Valley and the Southwestern part of the state. In these schools, UCCP is providing enriching educational experiences to students who are often the first in their families to consider attending college and subsequently know little about eligibility requirements.

In some cases, the online courses have some advantages over their traditional counterparts, such as a wealth of rich multimedia (including simulations and animations), many opportunities for reflective practice, and anytime/anywhere access.

However online courses are not without their drawbacks, as UCCP is well aware.

"Although online courses may be not be the ideal method for high school educational delivery, it's better than the alternative, which is no courses at all," says Rafael Granados, UCCP associate director of curriculum and development.

A major challenge in offering online education -- for both young and adult learners -- is retention. Distance education tends to have higher dropout rates compared to classroom-based courses, in part due to the limited amount of human interaction, technological problems, and misconceptions about online courses.

Screen shot of vClass, virtual collaboration software that CyberMentors use to mentor UCCP students

UCCP courses require a significant amount of independent study, and not all students are adequately prepared for this. There is an online instructor (with whom students can interact through asynchronous email) who leads the course, and the high schools are required to schedule class time as well as provide an on-site mentor. However, the mentors do not always have expertise relevant to the subject matter. And sometimes students feel isolated because they are one of only a few - if not the only -- student taking the course at their school.

Another challenge for UCCP is dispelling the common myth that online courses are easier than traditional courses, when in fact they require just as much, if not more, work. Add in the fact that many UCCP students are experiencing AP- and Honors-level work for the first time, and you have students who feel overwhelmed and thus drop the course. In Fall 2001, UCCP had a 26.9% dropout rate.

A 2001 evaluation of the UCCP program conducted by WestEd bore this out. Their report stated that "the quality of student support is a crucial factor in terms of success as measured by course completion and students' feelings of academic well-being…The main factors causing students to drop out were that the time commitment necessary was greater than they had expected and that the level of interaction with their online instructor was lower than they had expected."

The dropout rate has since dwindled to the low teens, in part due to UCCP resolving some early technical problems as well as rolling out two services to confront these challenges: one is to make available to schools the choice to offer AP and Honors courses as "supplements," meaning that UCCP provides the online course material and partners with teachers to offer face-to-face classes. These supplement courses have become increasingly popular, accounting for approximately 1,800 enrollments this Spring, says Granados.

Another way UCCP is enhancing the students' sense of connection and keeping them on track with their coursework is the "CyberMentor" program which began its pilot phase in Fall 2002. The CyberMentors give students not only the academic support they need to successfully complete the courses but also the personal interaction that is so crucial to distance education.

Michelle Balmeo, a UCSC junior majoring in American Literature, mentors high school students from all over the state who are enrolled in the English Literature AP course. She meets with them regularly to help with their AP coursework, keep track of their progress, as well as answer their questions about college. They do all of this through collaborative meeting software called vClass (by Elluminate). Balmeo and her students log onto the software simultaneously and "meet" in a virtual classroom that allows them to talk to each other using voice over IP, as well as send instant messages, share files, write notes on a whiteboard, and mark up documents in real time.

"The virtual classroom is awesome," says Balmeo, who often schedules sessions on specific topics and then presents PowerPoint presentations to the students. "In vClass I can talk to the students and we can have good communication. We also use the text chat if the students are at home and don't have a microphone or high-speed Internet access, but it is just as effective. With a specific assignment I'll have students email their work to me and I'll put it up on the interactive white board and I'll ask them to do things like highlight their theses. Then I can mark up the documents and they can see my revisions in real time."

For the pilot phase, 12 CyberMentors from UCSC, UCD and UCLA are supporting approximately 900 eligible students (although only a dozen or so students regularly contact each CyberMentor). Several of the mentors are Regents Scholars, all of them have previous tutoring experiences, and many are interested in teaching as a career.

"I've definitely gained an interest in teaching high school, especially AP and Honors courses," says Balmeo. "It's so rewarding. The students want to know so much and are always asking questions. I had tutored high school students before but they were high-risk students who needed remedial help -- which is rewarding too -- but the UCCP students really challenge you and push you to your limits. They expect a lot of you."

Michelle Balmeo, UCCP CyberMentor and UCSC junior

Budget Situation Makes for Uncertain Times

Despite all of the good work being done by UCCP, these are not the best of times to be a UC K-12 outreach program. The bleak budget situation in California has left UCCP uncertain as to what level of services they'll be able to provide in the future. UCCP has already survived one near miss when its entire budget was slated for the chopping block (it's funded directly from the state), but 50% of its funding was quickly restored.

With the economy not looking any better for next year -- perhaps worse -- UCSC Vice Chancellor Hernandez does not know if they will have the funds to develop and purchase more courses, continue mentoring students, or offer professional development opportunities to teachers and staff - all of which is part of its mission.

"The 50% cut drastically alters the long-term plan for growth," says Hernandez. "We have halted any significant growth plans until we know what the budget is."

Like other UC K-12 outreach programs, UCCP has become very important to the schools in which it operates and its services will be sorely missed if they are terminated or reduced. "When the first budget cuts were announced and we were going to be terminated, we received a lot of support from our schools, who wanted to help in any way they could," says Granados, UCCP associate director. "We've already become part of the culture."