About AP Capstone
Year One: AP Seminar Year Two: AP Research
Course Description:
The AP Capstone Seminar course is year-one of the College Board’s AP Diploma Program. AP Seminar is an inquiry-based course that aims to engage students in cross-curricular conversations that explore the complexities of academic and real-world topics and issues by analyzing divergent perspectives.
Using an inquiry framework, students practice reading and analyzing articles, research studies, and foundational literary, and philosophical texts; listening to and viewing speeches, broadcasts, and personal accounts; and experiencing artistic works and performances. Students learn to synthesize information from multiple sources, develop their own perspectives in written essays, and design and deliver oral and visual presentations, both individually and as part of a team.
Students are empowered to collect and analyze information with accuracy and precision in order to craft and communicate evidence-based arguments. Ultimately, the course aims to equip students with the power to analyze and evaluate information with accuracy and precision in order to craft and communicate evidence-based arguments. For College Board credit the class has three performance tasks: a team project and presentation; an individual research-based essay and presentation; and an end-of-course exam, taken in May.
While in high school, students engage as investigators and communicators throughout the research process using a college-developed framework (Guided Design Inquiry) which will benefit them throughout their high school, college and professional careers.
Students must develop time management skills where they work over an extended period of time, both with a team and as an individual researcher, building their capacity and agency as researchers, writers and speakers.
Students learn to speak and write with ‘academic voice’ which fosters confidence and credibility that will last long into their professional and social spaces.
Students choose to independently investigate and explore questions/topics which, many times, cannot be found within any other course at Ridge (or even beyond) providing a unique opportunity to demonstrate focused-inquiry and ingenuity on a potential topic of academic or professional interest.
Students learn the processes of ‘discovery’ and ‘defense’ where they go through a rigorous discovery process in order to raise questions, investigate perspectives and draw conclusions which they are then prepared to defend in written and presentational forms.