2016 AP Course and Exam Changes
College Board has redesigned AP Courses and Exams in AP Art History and AP European History launched this year.
Art History
The redesigned course is equivalent to a two-semester introductory college course and offers teachers the flexibility to tailor instruction to meet the needs and interests of their students. The course limits the required course content to 250 diverse works of art to promote in-depth learning, underscoring the exam’s focus on assessing students’ in-depth critical analysis of relationships among works of art, art historical concepts, and global cultures. Beginning with the 2016 exam:
The AP Art History Exam will no longer have Parts A and B for Sections I and II. The total standard time for the exam remains 3 hours, with 1 hour for Section I and 2 hours for Section II.
The exam materials for the AP Art History Exam will no longer include an orange booklet for Section I; they will only include an orange booklet for Section II.
European History
The redesigned course is structured around the investigation of five course themes and 19 key concepts in four different chronological periods, from approximately 1450 to the present. The course allows students to spend more time learning essential concepts and developing necessary historical thinking skills by focusing on a limited number of key concepts. Beginning with the 2016 exam, Section I, Part A (Multiple Choice) will be 55 minutes long; Section I, Part B (Short-Answer Questions) will be 50 minutes long; Section II (Free Response) will be 1 hour and 30 minutes long; and the standard total time for the exam will be 3 hours and 15 minutes. In the redesigned exam, all multiple-choice questions will be grouped in sets that are linked to historical source material. There will be new short-answer questions that ask students to respond to historical source material or historical questions.
Computer Science A
Beginning with the 2016 exam, the multiple-choice section of the AP Computer Science A Exam will be 1 hour and 30 minutes, an increase of 15 minutes from the 2015 exam. The free-response section will be 1 hour and 30 minutes, a decrease of 15 minutes from the 2015 exam. The standard total time for the exam will remain at 3 hours.
AP Research
This fall, the AP Research course launches at more than 130 participating schools worldwide as the second course in the AP Capstone™ program. For more information about AP Research and AP Capstone, visit http://www.collegeboard.org/apcapstone