I think most people are familiar with traditional AP study guides. The thousands of pages, the black and white images, and the practice tests at the end which offer limited text-based feedback. The new OmniPrep Series from Omninox publishing seek to redesign AP study guides, by creating a more digital and interactive learning experience. Recently, I tried out their new AP physics guide, let's take a look!
The goal of Omninox publishing with their new OmniPrep series was to create a product that appealed to digital learners, at a reasonable cost ($14.99 which is comparable to most other text-based guides), and that offered a more interactive learning experience.
Welcome to AP Physics
When you first open up the guide in iBooks (either on an iOS device or on your mac) you'll find yourself at the table of contents. From here, you can pick a specific area to focus on, or jump right in at the beginning with kinematics!
Where would you like to begin?
The chapters read like normal, and they also offer a collection of color, vector-based graphics to assist in learning the content. And, as with any book in iBooks, you can highlight passages to save for later or to create study cards with. But, you might not need to, because the guide already comes with built in flash cards over the vocabulary from each chapter.
Checking out the chapter and flash cards
At the end of each section, you'll find example problems with step-by-step guides on how to work a solution. You'll find short practice quizzes as well, to help ensure that you're understanding the material you just finished. There is also a built-in advanced function calculator to help with the calculations.
Example problems and practice quizzes!
On top of that, at the end of the book (which you can obviously skip to any time you would like to) you'll find 3 full length, timed practice exams. After you take the practice exam, you'll receive feedback on how you did and what problems you missed. And, if you missed any, the guide will also tell you where you can review the information.
Taking a practice exam
Overall, OmniPrep does a nice job of taking the traditional AP study guide and improving upon it to make it more interactive and engaging. That being said, I did find a few problems while working through the guide...
Suggestions for Improvement
My first suggestion is a minor one, and that would be to include simple videos and animations in addition to images. So much of physics is motion based, and to be able to see equations in action, and have more interactive explanations, would be enormously helpful.
My other suggestion is that it would be nice to see more comprehensive feedback after taking the practice exam. For example, a breakdown of the types of questions missed would be awesome (i.e. you have difficulty with kinematics, but excel in Newtonian physics). A more detailed analysis would help students easily pinpoint exactly what areas they need to brush up on.
With that being said, I do believe OmniPrep is a very valuable resource. And the practice exams, the text, the example problems, and the practice quizzes are great preparation tools for the AP exam. The OmniPrep team is definitely well on the way to improving and digitizing the world of AP study guides.
My other suggestion is that it would be nice to see more comprehensive feedback after taking the practice exam. For example, a breakdown of the types of questions missed would be awesome (i.e. you have difficulty with kinematics, but excel in Newtonian physics). A more detailed analysis would help students easily pinpoint exactly what areas they need to brush up on.
With that being said, I do believe OmniPrep is a very valuable resource. And the practice exams, the text, the example problems, and the practice quizzes are great preparation tools for the AP exam. The OmniPrep team is definitely well on the way to improving and digitizing the world of AP study guides.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated for reviewing this application
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