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As Apex Learning (Bellevue, WA, www.apexlearning.com) has sharpened the focus of its mission, its brand name has moved into the background. A virtual school wanting to establish its own brand name is the Apex customer. "We want to be seen as an enabler not a competitor," says Keith Oelrich, president and ceo. With that role, Apex is expanding beyond AP courses and moving from a business model in which content was created in house to a model of working with content partners.

Oelrich points out that Apex has always worked with content partners. Indeed, Michigan Virtual U was an early contributor to the AP courses. Now, however, Apex no longer has production people in house, and allowing partners to build to Apex's design methodology has created a new level of scalability. Oelrich anticipates tremendous growth. In fact, in the two years from June 2000 to June 20002, he predicts growing the company by a factor of 20.

Significantly, the refined business model coincides with the company's movement from pilots and beta testing to multi-year agreements with schools, districts and states. That transition is often tricky for technology companies, but Apex is used in 28 states with more than 70% having multi-year contracts, and that establishes a requisite amount of activity to drive momentum.

Apex proved itself with AP courses, a market niche that included a built-in testing program to demonstrate effectiveness. Recognizing that there were other courses for which schools cannot always find faculty, Apex then expanded to foreign language courses in a partnership with Power-Glide International, Inc. (Provo, UT, www.powerglide.com). Power-Glide provides experienced foreign language and distance-learning instructors to teach the courses, and Apex provides the technology for the audio and visual components of the course. The partnership began with six classes in French, German and Spanish and was recently expanded to Latin I, Latin II and an AP Spanish course.

Core Curriculum with U of Washington

The most recent content partnership is a deal with U of Washington (UW) to develop ten new online courses for high schools: full year courses in chemistry, intermediate algebra, pre-calculus, introduction to American literature, U.S. history and earth sciences and one semester courses in geography, internet, sociology and psychology. All 16 semesters of new content will be available to Apex Learning's virtual school customers beginning with the 2002-2003 school year. UW is responsible for the content, and Apex brings their design expertise and distribution abilities. UW will retain ownership of the courses, and Apex has distribution rights.

In other partnerships, Academic Systems Corp. licenses some Apex content for their Academic.com library; instructional content and customer management systems are integrated with Blackboard's platform; Apex has incorporated textbook content from Duxbury Press, South-Western Publishing and W.W. Norton & Company; ScienceMedia is a co-development partner for the AP Chemistry course (see following article); tutor.com powers the Apex Learning Tutoring Network; U of California College Prep (UCCP) is co-funding development of the AP Chemistry and expanding AP access to students in the state of California; Kaplan, Inc., is a strategic investor in Apex Learning and a distribution partner for the AP Review product line.

Oelrich says Apex has shifted away from a focus on their professional development offerings, but partnerships are in place for what was once anticipated to be an area of expansion. Bigchalk customers can register for Apex Learning's academic credit-eligible professional development courses directly from www.bigchalk.com, and Apex Learning is collaborating with Edison Schools to produce original content for EdLab--a curriculum and professional development distance-learning package.

In addition to offering a complete solution for virtual schools, online courses and online professional development, the Apex product line includes ClassTools and ExamReview. ClassTools is a repurposing of the product line for use in traditional classes. Sales have already reached the goals for the next twelve months, so the quota was just raised. ExamReview helps students prepare for the AP exam. Apex has 50,000 paid enrollments with licenses at the individual, district and state level. Oelrich adds that the company has its eye on preparing students for state exams.