The AP^® College Curriculum Study is designed to provide empirical evidence about the best practices among the college-level courses equivalent to those offered by the AP program to high school students. The College Board AP Course and Exam Commissions will use the findings in an extensive review of the 37 AP courses. In order to accomplish this goal, the study provides the following information:

• A set of empirically derived criteria that clearly delineate what is most important for students to know and be able to do in a best practices college course.
• A set of best practices courses that align with these criteria in each subject area.
• In selected subject areas, a composite course that narrates the critical attributes from the set of best practices courses and exemplifies the concepts, principles, and techniques, as well as assignments and tests of courses identified as possessing best practices attributes.

This is a multi-year project that includes a set of 5-8 courses each year until all 37 AP courses have been reviewed. In the first year of the project, all AP history and science courses were included. In the second year, eight world language and literature courses were reviewed. Plans for the third year of the project include review of calculus, computer science, and English.

methodology

In order to generate these findings, the study draws upon data that describe and identify best practices in each subject area. First, the study designs a subject-specific, criterion-based instrument to rate best practices courses in that content area. Project staff then recruits institutions that enroll students who take AP examinations in each subject area and asks them to nominate courses that are examples of best practices. The chosen courses must be the equivalent course at each institution of the AP course. For each nominated course, three primary sources of data are analyzed:

• ratings by instructors against the criterion-based rating instrument,
• ratings by external raters who use the same criterion-based instrument to analyze course documents, such as syllabi, assignments, and tests, as submitted by instructors and
• declarations by external reviewers of each item in the criterion-based instrument that are evident (and therefore taught) in the college-level best practices course.

Researchers develop a multi-step process to identify best practices courses and their attributes. The process contains the following major components:

1. Engage content experts to develop subject-specific, criterion-based instruments that identified the content knowledge, habits of mind, and instructional practices that should be found in best practices college courses in each subject area.
2. Identify a pool of courses nominated as best practices by higher education institutions that receive the most applications from high school students who have taken AP examinations in each subject area being studied.
3. Have instructors of nominated courses and external raters who are also subject area experts complete the instrument in order to identify from the pool of potential best practices courses in each subject area those courses that exemplify best practices.
4. Utilize expert panels to review the candidate best practices courses and validate whether these courses do in fact represent best practices in each subject area.
5. Analyze these courses to determine the commonalities that exist among them and the critical attributes that make them best practices courses.
6. Transmit this information, along with the instruments developed to identify best practices courses, to panels or commissions charged with the review process for each subject area.