This summer, the 140 students from 30 Philadelphia-area schools are testing more than 400 lesson plans that will be available to high school teachers for free on the site in August. The lessons cover nine business topics, including economics, career development, and marketing.
The hope is that KWHS can be a source for any teacher across the globe to implement the tested methods.
Scott Stimpfel, founder of the KWHS summer program, said it was important to get feedback from students.
"We wanted to make sure that the lesson plans we developed weren't developed in a vacuum," he said. "Students are actively speaking with teachers and participating in the discussion. They are actually bringing in their knowledge to the classroom."
Nine doctoral students from Penn's Graduate School of Education each created 30 lesson plans about their subject and an additional 10 each on leadership, using information from the website. Another student who isn't teaching will produce 60 more.
For 14 days, like school, 70 students attend three-hour morning or afternoon sessions - or both. Each class is one hour, and the students rotate to different teachers.
After the class, they fill out a short survey asking if they liked the lesson and what they would change. Then another 14-day session starts with fresh faces, so that the lessons are tested twice.
Stimpfel said the responses had been overwhelmingly positive - a 93 percent approval rating. "Our biggest complaint is that the sessions aren't long enough," he said. "Some student ask for homework. They're very interested in the topic."
