UW’s Vice Provost for Educational Outreach David Szatmary says the new online high school courses are based on already-developed online college-level, credit-bearing courses offered through UW’s distance learning program. "Then we hired high school teachers to give us ideas about how that content, which is college based, should be customized for high school students.

"We are pacing the courses differently," he continues. "We are spreading them out more, with a lot more activities. Some of the higher level exercises will be replaced by other types of activities. We are trying to put more multimedia into the process, and the courses will technically run on the Apex system."

The goal is to have all ten courses ready by next month so they can be launched and made available to Apex Learning virtual school customers during the upcoming fall semester. UW owns the intellectual property rights to the content of the courses. Apex has funded "a good piece of the development," including providing instructional design services, says Szatmary, adding that UW has some equity in the courses, "but Apex has stepped forward with some up-front money for the development." In addition, UW will receive "a certain dollar amount per student that registers" for these Apex-branded and delivered courses.

"We feel that Apex has a good handle on the current high school market, and they will serve as an integrator for both marketing and delivering the courses," Szatmary explains. "At this point, we don’t want to get into that business. Apex has a lot of connections and a lot of knowledge of the national high school market."

Sue Collins, chief education officer for Apex, adds that partnering with higher education brings a combination of "knowledge and experience in serving the K-12 market with our higher ed partners’ content and course development expertise. The result is online courses that will expand and enrich learning opportunities for high school students."

Szatmary says that on a national level it would be a risky, high-expense proposition for UW to develop and market these courses on their own. "For the University of Washington, thanks to Apex, this is a relatively low-risk development process for us because of their up-front funding. If, in fact, students don’t materialize, it will be a minimal risk for us. So, it’s been a good situation."

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