Oak Mountain High School is a large public school in Birmingham, Alabama. It has roughly 1,600 students with a student-teacher ratio of 18:1. Teachers and students describe Oak Mountain High as a “suburban school with a supportive community in which everyone is willing to pitch in.”
When AP® US History teacher, Chris Dean, saw a tweet describing a platform that tracks students’ success in preparation for the AP® exams, he had to find out more. His students needed practice, not only reviewing content for AP® US History, but also test taking confidence. He applied to the Albert Pilot Program and set the following goals for himself, and the other Oak Mountain piloting teachers:
Chris felt these goals would provide both teachers and students meaningful feedback on whether or not Albert would be an ideal fit for their entire schools to adopt after the pilot.
Additionally, Chris works on the School Improvement team at Oak Mountain, and saw Albert as an additional resource for students in improving ACT® scores.
During the four weeks of free access through the Albert Pilot Program, 18 teachers used Albert for a wide variety of subject areas: ACT®, Macbeth, AP® Latin, Chemistry, Elements of a Sentence, and Geometry, just to name a few.
With the support of the Albert adoption team, Chris led a couple different professional development sessions to help teachers get acclimated. He described the overall onboarding process as "seamless". Teachers at OMHS also took advantage of Albert’s Google classroom integration. Dean says “Albert is a breeze to set up if you understand Google classroom. Even our teachers who are not as tech savvy found it to be very easy to get set up.”
Chris shared their were several “ah-ha” moments for teachers during the pilot. "Our AP® U.S. Government teacher was thrilled that Albert was already aligned to the redesign. Teachers were excited about the data they received. They were able to quickly and easily see not only how students were doing, but also how much time they spent on an assignment or question.” Teachers were able to use this information to encourage students to engage with their work more in-depth.
After Chris and the other OMHS teachers had created multiple virtual assignments on Albert, the evidence became even more clear. Teachers could see most proficient and struggling areas for every student, as well as the entire class. Mr. Dean says “the best thing that Albert does is it justifies answers to the students. It is so important that the site tells them why the answers are right and wrong, that alone is worth the price of admission. In this testing climate, especially on the AP tests, students are often asked to answer the question ‘which answer is more right’ and this takes practice.”
Every student at Oak Mountain High School is now licensed on Albert. The entire junior class is working alongside their counselors on ACT® practice. Mr. Dean is now also Albert Level 1 certified.
